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Error Code Guide

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OE

The same code, the opposite fault

Error codes are not a shared language. We cross checked 68 codes across 4 brands against manufacturer documentation, and 7 of them mean something different depending on the badge on the door. Some mean the exact opposite.

Codes that mean different things

This is the list worth checking before you buy a part. Searching a code without the brand name is how people end up following advice written for somebody else's machine.

Code

OE

The clearest reversal in the whole reference. On LG it means the water will not go out; on Samsung it means there is too much of it in there. One sends you to the drain pump, the other to the inlet valve and the level sensor.

Code

LE

A motor that will not turn on LG, water where it should not be on Samsung. Nothing about the two repairs overlaps, and the Samsung one is the urgent of the pair.

Code

1E

Water arriving too slowly on LG, water escaping on Samsung. Worth knowing that neither brand writes it this way on purpose: it is how a seven segment display draws the I in LG's IE and the 1 in Samsung's own labelling.

Code

CE

An electrical fault in the motor circuit on LG, and on a Samsung washing machine something entirely mechanical: the hot and cold hoses connected the wrong way round. The second is free to fix and takes ten minutes.

Code

BE

Too much foam on an LG dishwasher, a button stuck down on a Samsung one. Both are cheap to fix and neither fix helps the other machine at all.

Code

6E

A stuck button on a Samsung dishwasher, and on an LG top loader the clutch that drives the drum. One is a wipe and a press, the other is a technician.

Code

HC

Both are about hot water, which is what makes this pair deceptive. Whirlpool means the hot and cold hoses are swapped; Samsung means the water in the machine got hotter than it should. Swapped hoses you fix yourself in minutes, overheating you stop using the machine for.

Codes that mean the same thing everywhere

The shorter and more comforting list. On these, advice written for one brand is usually safe to follow on another.

DESamsung washing machine, LG washing machine
The door did not lock, on both brands. Check the same things: something caught in the seal, a latch that has dropped, a door that no longer sits square.
UBSamsung washing machine, LG washing machine
An unbalanced load on both. Open the door, spread the washing out by hand, and restart. A single heavy item on its own is the usual cause.
SUDWhirlpool washing machine, Samsung washing machine, LG washing machine
Too much foam, on all three brands that use it. The machine is not broken; it is waiting for the suds to collapse, and the cure is less detergent next time.
TESamsung dishwasher, LG washing machine, LG dishwasher
A temperature sensor fault on every machine that shows it. Rare agreement between three different manufacturers, and it means a search without the brand name will not mislead you for once.
HESamsung dishwasher, LG dishwasher
The water is not getting hot, on both brands. Same first check too: run the kitchen hot tap until it is genuinely hot before starting a cycle.

Why manufacturers do this

Nobody set out to confuse anyone. Each manufacturer numbered its own faults in its own order, decades apart, for displays that could show two characters at most. LG used the first letter of the fault, so O for overflow protection became OE. Samsung grouped faults by system and numbered them, so drainage became 5. Neither was thinking about the other.

The seven segment display makes it worse. It cannot draw a capital S, so Samsung's SC arrives as 5C. It cannot distinguish a capital I from a one, so LG's IE reads as 1E. People search exactly what they see, which is why every code on this site carries its alternative spellings.

The practical rule that follows is one line: always search the code with the brand name, never on its own.

How we checked

Every code here is confirmed against the manufacturer's own documentation and at least one independent repair source. Where the two disagree about which part is at fault, we publish nothing at all rather than pick a side: there are codes sitting in our notes unpublished for exactly that reason.

The comparison covers 68 codes across 4 brands, last reviewed on 2026-08-10. As the reference grows, this page grows with it, because the meanings on it are read straight from the same data as the code pages themselves.