I've had my front-loader for 15 years now. I've never used He detergent in it. My memory was that I could use He detergent if I wanted, or I could use regular detergent and use about half of the normal amount. I never saw He detergent in the stores around here when I got the machine, so I always used the regular. I don't know if I've done damage, but I've never had any problems with my machine. At first I would sometimes get errors about too much suds when I put in too much regular detergent, but I figured that out and haven't had a problem since.

As for He detergent I understood it was because it suds up less. My salesman didn't say anything damage to the machine.