I think your comment got me to bite the bullet. I ended up buying the KitchenAid counter depth during labor day sales. It’s the side by side. I have only had it for one day but so far I like it. I like that I can see everything. I am surprised that I really do notice the extra few inches of kitchen floor space. My kitchen is small by today’s standards so that is nice. The new standard sized KitchenAid side by side would have stuck out at least two more inches than my old one did which was already too big for the space. I have a feeling that I will end up with a very small frig to put in the nearby garage.
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Glad you’re happy with it thus far!
The extra fridge is a topic of conversation right now here too.
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I figure it is an inevitable thing to happen for me. I’ll give it a while to see how small I can go. I already have a space picked out in the garage for it.
My husband remarked to the delivery guy that he is happy to know that he is no longer going to get dragged over to the appliance section whenever I see one. I have been at this “buy a new frig” for years now so his comment was understandable. Buying the small one will be a much simpler process. 
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BUYING a new appliance during kitchen renovation is a far cry from actually USING it. I am finally back home, with a fuller fridge than expected. I like Sidrat😜, but she is definitely smaller on the inside. She measures inches more, in every dimension, than her standard 19.1cu.ft. predecessor. But the shelves are just 14.5" deep. They were completely filled with the contents of a much smaller, but deeper, hotel kitchenette fridge. The six door shelves in Sidrat’s fridge section are deep, holding many jars and bottles. Exhibit one in my “condimentia” diagnosis.
I appreciate the drawers and shelves in the freezer section, which should lower the incidence of contents languishing, forgotten, in the rear of the compartment.
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In 2 months I went from happy with my fridge to shooting myself in the foot talking about $800+ compressor replacements - mine just died.
And what is really strange is that the 27 cu.ft. Samsung that I linked to at Lowe’s in my first post, was then $1600 and is now showing $2700. Must have been a whale of a sale back in August, or the website’s glitchy or something.
Oh, well, hidey ho, it’s a-shopping I will go.
Edit - Oh no! So sorry about your cruddy news. I’m a month late, so I’m hoping you both have gotten some decent leads.
Thanks. I’ve had quite a lot of interviews so that is keeping my spirits up. Still waiting for it to translate to a paycheck. We never bought the new fridge but I had liked a Samsung the best. However I can see now that it’s not really a dependable brand for kitchens. There was recently an article in the news about that company having the highest rate of complaints of any brand and Samsung just shrugging it off like they don’t care. So when we are in a position buy something new it probably won’t be Samsung.
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Glad to hear about the interviews. It can be hard to be patient, but at least in my industry, hiring lawyers took us months from initial candidate interest to offers.
My wife tells me I’ve been wrong in saying our Sammy that died was about 12. She recalled enough milestones around when we got it to convince me it was more like 17 years old. I feel a little less irked about the compressor going now.
The tech claimed the brand matters a lot less than the type. He said the vast majority of fridges he works on are French door/lower freezer and repeated, “I tell you, buy side-by-side!” (Romanian accent).
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Could be but when we went looking, 80% were that style. Doesn’t explain why Samsung consistently has the most complaints and repair needs. Because all the brands do that style. Unrelated, 17 is a longer than average run for a fridge. Ours appeared to be 12 or 14 when it croaked.
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Yeah, I admit we were lucky to get 17 from the Samsung, and we’ve still got the (now) 28.5 y.o. Kenmore going strong in the basement.
My wife pointed out something like what you said - basically if in this area the major style was the bottom freezer/French door, then of course that’s what he’d see the most repair needs on. So his impression that S/S is better than French/bottom freezer (regardless of brand) may not be better than yet another anecdote.
To your point, though, I’m on our CR acct right now and for the French door type, LGs are way up at the top (83 scores) with a couple of GEs at 80, and the Samsungs are way down around 63 points. Of course CR amalgamates a lot of stuff into their final score, but reliability is definitely one of the bigger weighted items. So I’m thinking I got lucky to get 17 from this Sammy and will shy away from them for now.
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The local appliance store (that serviced what they sold) where I bought my next-to-last fridge (which died at 3 years) told me at the time to not to get an LG because parts for service took months to get. CR has led me astray more than once. I have a subscription, but lately I wonder about their ratings.
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Yeah but if you can’t trust CR, who CAN you trust?
(Dusts off notes about how last year CR accepted “research funding” from a Wind-power related organization, then ran a bunch of wind-power positive articles, none mentioning bird kills")
Not that wind power isn’t a good adjunct to other power systems. Just that CR has thrown their hat in the ring, and accepted money to publicly do so…
Hungry Onion?
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Keep an eye open for holiday sales. Hopeful that an “early Black Friday” or “Black Friday” promo may be available for your timing. I attended a webinar on kitchen design this summer, where the president of the appliance dealership mentioned that holiday periods are when manufacturers offer their best deals.
Thanks - I would but it’s completely dead, so I don’t want to wait much. I got most of the fridge-area stuff packed into the downstairs fridge, but that freezer is already packed. I’m managing with dry ice blocks in the dead freezer, but that’s costing me about $30/day.
I ordered this 28 cu.ft. (27.6 actually) LG side-side from Lowe’s this morning just before heading out to church, and it’ll be here tomorrow (2 hour window as yet unspecified). I’m going with it based on cost, barebones what we need, and crossing my fingers. The French door styles currently on offer were either too small in this price range, or a lot more in this size range. Plus I’m getting old enough my back doesn’t appreciate me rooting around in the French door freezer.
The ice maker just dumps into a bucket (does not dispense), but the fridge does dispense filtered water out the door, a must for my wife. She’s happy it does not dispense ice because the chute mechanism takes up a big chunk of real estate on the door panel. But the water gets snaked up takes no shelf space away from the door - looking at the inside of the door, you wouldn’t know it has water.
The supposed “usual” price was $1550 and they have it knocked down to $1049, and when you put it in the cart it drops to $949. They’ve got a promo going this month (which come to think of it is kind of what you’re talking about) where each 800 spent saves 100. So if you were remodeling a kitchen with higher end stuff, in addition to whatever sales prices were involved, you could theoretically shave $1K off of an order priced at $8K.
Is anything really ever priced at the “usual” price? Anyway, the water hose is about $15, delivery is “free”, and they charge $50 to take the old one, so with tax I’m still under $1100.
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When our French door/bottom freezer model’s compressor sh*t the bed at barely 3 years old, our repair guy said the same thing about getting a side-by-side. Something about the compressor goes in those more often and also issues with the design of the water and ice dispenser being in the door when the actual freezer was down below. We ended up getting a GE side-by-side with water and ice in the door and so far so good (another 3-ish years on).
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Ouch - 3 years! I know that LG and Samsung both warrant the sealed system components (condenser, evaporator, compressor) for 5 years. I don’t know about anyone else.
I always refuse extended warranties (a.k.a. nowadays “Protection Plans”) but if I ever had something worth $1000 go dead in just a few years, I might start rethinking that position.
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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 …
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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.
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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.
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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.
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