A salutory tale for all you maintenance washers...my washing machine hadn't been working properly for a while so I decided that a "mumsnet service wash" could only help...how wrong I was.
Apart from stinking the place out to high heaven the performance of the machine got noticeably worse until it wouldn't work at all. Cue wringing of hands about buying a new one / who was going to stay at home for the new one, whether we could cope with the apparently simply job of unplumbing the old one and replumbing the new one...
I had a new machine parked in my JL shopping basket when I thought I would return once more to the notorious maintenance wash problems thread to pick up any final tips...and decided to have a go at cleaning the filter. Well it turns out that you are supposed to clean the filter at least once a year. My machine is 9 years old and this was the first time 
The filter was totally cloggola with gunk which I cleverly binned instead of re-clogging my drains with. And the washing machine is happy again!!!
Clean your filters, people.
That is all.