I had a Kitchen Aid side by side that completely died in less than 3 years. My current one is a Bosch French door counter depth. Why did I choose it? Because we were in a pandemic and that’s what was immediately available. I’d rather have the side be side, truth be told. Water and ice through the door, because that’s what they had. And I got the extended warranty this time.
After all, I’d just bought 2 refrigerators in 3 years. Bonus - I couldn’t remove the water filter to change it, and they sent a tech - no charge, because I had the warranty. Guy said, you should see what people do trying to get the filter out - you don’t want a flood …
2 Likes
You are correct. In the past, I’ve always refused extended warranties.
Just recently I purchased a new LG fridge and this time I did purchase the extended warranty. It was $160 - no exclusions, no co-pays, parts and labor included. I read the documents for loop-holes, but couldn’t find any… but who knows. I hope I won’t have to use it. From now on, though; I’m going to purchase the extended warranty on any refrigerators that I purchase.
2 Likes
Before buying an extended warranty make sure you’re not duplicating any coverage your credit card company may provide.
Lots of issuers provide automatic warranty coverage beyond the OEM warranty.
And assuming you have a home warranty (not insurance) check that too.
Last thing you want to do is buy redundant coverage.
4 Likes
My sister went through that - her husband is crazy handy, and he managed to keep their fridge limping along for the 6 months it took them to get a fridge. This was while we had that big mess of tanker ships sitting of NorCal waiting a chance to drop their cargo.
I just now looked and Frigidaire’s current warranty is (like LG, Samsung I mentioned above) 5 years. But this is only for the sealed components, so if (e.g.) it was your brain board that fried, it’s only covered 1 year. Weird, really. I don’t know the cost of the brain board for a fridge, but in a Kenmore dryer, the cost from SearsPartsDirect was nearly 80% of the new cost of the dryer. SMH.
But yeah, if I’d had your experience (and Dan’s), I’d be lining up for that extended warranty. What bugs me about them is the House Take. These things tend to run over 15% of the item’s purchase price. Any one given early failure is a catastrophe for the person it happens to. But are these early catastrophes happening at anywhere near the rate justifying the 15% price tag? Plus reasonable profits to the insurer? I just don’t know.
Edit to add
Good point. The LG that I just ordered has only 1 year overall (think brain board death as I mentioned above) with 5 years on the compressor etc.
All 3 of our cards double a general (but not a specific) manufacturer’s warranty, up to 1 additional year.
So in that case I’ve already got 2 years for overall or “bumper to bumper” warranty, but still just the 5 years on sealed component stuff.
Edit 2. Well, shoot, I just got a delivery window from Lowes, possibly as early as 0730 tomorrow. If I’d known that 20 minutes ago, I wouldn’t have bought that next $30 worth of dry ice.
Oh well, I can always make some bombs with it. I have leftover empty Dasani and Gatorade bottles in the garage.
3 Likes
Fridge delivered this morning and I’ve got all the foodstuffs back in, and am getting to know the fridge. Above I lamented having bought the dry ice but I hadn’t considered that it takes a few hours to get the freezer down to temp, so I’m glad I had it.
Here’s a fun one. To flush the lines and water filter, they say to dispense 3 gallons of water, using the sequence of 20 seconds on, 60 seconds off. They tell you this will take “approximately 5 min.”.
Do folks who write instructions ever attempt to perform them? This fridge dispenses 20 oz per 20 second session (a bit under 1/2 gallon per minute, typical or a bit better than most I’ve seen). Even if I simply ran it full on all the time without the 20 on, 60 off sequence, it’d take over 6 minutes. With the sequencing, it would take over 25 minutes.
So I did the sequence about 5 times, then just ran off a couple of gallons of water.
ETA: My recently dearly departed fridge had a safety feature, an auto cut-off, where it would not dispense more than 2L of water at a time. This one doesn’t seem to have it, or if it does, it’s at something more than 3L, the bowl I was using would take about 3.5L before it was so full I was in danger of slopping on the way to the sink.
2 Likes
I have been really happy with our Fisher & Paykel, which was recommended by some posters (@pilgrim and others!) when I asked about fridges last fall.
The more expensive German and American fridges wouldn’t fit in the kitchen.
1 Like
That is very true, and very sad. Refrigerators used to last 30+ years. Now 15 years is an old refrigerator.
3 Likes
They also used to be a lot more expensive to buy (after accounting for inflation) and a lot more expensive to operate (when you account for how less energy efficient they were to newer models).
Paying more, for a more costly widget. Double whammy.
Nostalgia is a dangerous thing.
4 Likes
I’d be happy to pay a premium for one that lasted more than a couple of years. Planning to buy one is one thing; the hassle of having to deal with one that breaks down unexpectedly and needs an immediate replacement is something I do not wish on my worst enemy. And I’m not even thinking about the cost in that scenario.
5 Likes
I hear you but I am not sure that you are looking at the entire picture. Old refrigerators were less efficient and cost more initially, but electricity made up a smaller portion of the household budget back in the day even with inefficient refrigerators. And the big factor is that a refrigerator that lasted 30+ years vs a refrigerator that lasts 12-15 years is depreciating a LOT slower. An $1000 refrigerator bought today that lasts 14 years is costing you $71 a year whereas the same refrigerator that lasted 30 years would cost just $33 a year.
Did your parents ever try to repair an old refrigerator? Probably not, but many of us have paid to keep the new refrigerator working for another couple years.
I do not know the complete answer here but I do know that having my refrigerator making noise after 5 years and dying after 12 irritates the living daylights out of me. It is too big and consists of too much metal and plastic for it to be a product I want to see wearing out that quickly.
YMMV.
7 Likes
My uncle was a refrigerator repair man, commercial and residential. Busy all the time! He was always being called out, nights, holidays, weekends…he couldn’t say no. We were beneficiaries of his advice on the brands and models to buy. In my lifetime we had two refers growing up, both were Sear’s products.
His job bought him a comfortable retirement home in a mountain lake community. Sadly the long exposure to the coolants and chemicals in his work cut that retirement life much too short.
5 Likes
Sorry to hear the last part.
2 Likes
Thanks. He was a great guy. Loved the water.
3 Likes
I can’t speak to refrigerators, but I got this point really driven in hard when I got an $8 Sunbeam ca. 1950s toaster (the kind that drop bread and raise bread automatically). The guy on YT who showed me how to rewire it (it was running hot and didn’t want Daughter#2 to have a fire) said it retailed close to $30 in the mid-1950s.
Holy Cow! This would be a $300+ toaster today. No one would pay for that, with the proliferation of $30 electomag typical toasters now.
The weirdest thing about these “vintage” 1950s toasters is that a super prime specimen is selling for about $250 on eBay etc. Meaning that they’re selling today for less (adjusted) than their original price.
So here’s the over/under on one type of item that I may be accused of being a freezer “hoarder” of. LoL.
I had 72 (yes, SEVENTY-TWO) quart bags of broth in the old fridge. I dumped 35 into the sink, once they thawed (I’m on septic but all of my broths are as close to fat free as I can make them). I kept 37 of them.
Note, no, I did NOT have 144 pounds of broth in there. Although all were packed in freezer quart bags, a lot of them were 2 cups, not full quarts. Maybe 90-plus pounds, though.
Anyway, the absolute age winner, all the way at the bottom, was a broth package simply labeled "Pork, January 2006". Holy crap. I also had a lot ranging from 2011 to 2018, and mostly I used age to decide what went down the sink. Although I also used appearance (if a given bag had any air intrusion and subsequent appearance of freezer burn - gone. So I kept some 2015-2018s and dumped some 2021 and later).
How the heck did I accumulate 72 bags of frozen broth? Simple. Every meal including bones (or shells) became broth. And so many meals then included bones (or shells).
I’m still heavy (on what I kept) on beef and pork. Almost all the chicken is gone because daughters 2 and 3 scrounge and steal them each time they visit. Most of the rest (the majority being beef, then pork as mentioned) are turkey, shrimp, lamb, duck, then lobster.
That last reminds me that it’s time for a nice bouillabaisse.
3 Likes
Bad things about this fridge. One of the more common complaints was that the “handle” to pull the 2 drawers in the fridge and the one in the freezer were molded on the underside of the drawers, and cumbersome to grab/pull.
I thought I could deal with that, but I underestimated how ungainly this is. So I ran a temp fix to make pulls at the tops of the drawers, using parts of a barrel of a defunct cheap ink pen, and the tape(*) used to hold the drawers and other stuff in place.
It works pretty well but I’ll probably refine it for future use.
(*) I have got to find me some of this kind of tape for general use. The peel strength is super low, but the shear strength is very high, and the linear break strength is very high. And even though it sticks to itself, the peel strength to remove the tape from itself is, again, very low. Even sticky face to sticky face, it’s easier to separate than Clingwrap.
This is like the perfect tape! I saved all the pieces they gifted me with in the fridge cabinet.
Edit - the pic of the drawer “pull” temp fix.
1 Like
At least the don’t spoil.
I once found a bag of frozen fish from 1993. Use by date of 2/4/93. I might still have it somewhere …
4 Likes
I cleaned out a chest freezer, when we got a standing freezer. A frozen eel had been in our freezer a very long time.
I did a big freezer clean-out and defrost of the standing freezer about a year ago. It’s full of containers of broth again. Which I’ll probably defrost and toss.
Last one. I hope.
I’m not sure how I missed this, but there’s no internal reservoir downstream of the filter, so the water is dispensed at the same temp as the water supply. Maybe I missed it because I’ve never heard of a filtered water dispensing fridge absent a ~ 2L chiller reservoir. Between myself and friends, family etc., I’ve probably sampled water from around 15 fridge dispensers.
I wish LG and/or Lowes had found some way to mention “not chilled” or some such in the product description. Maybe it’s common to LG refrigerators?
Did that when my last fridge died. I’m not freezing any more broth!! Ever!! I swear!!
2 Likes
