any ideas?

If you put detergent in with the laundry - and water is let in - and is heated up - and the drum agitates for a while - then it IS washing - that's what washing is - sloshing the clothes around in water to gently bash the dirt out. The detergent is a special chemical that has the ability to stick to both water and dirt

Something in the list above must be missing in your machine.

Peccavi
June 2010