The Devil Sells Whirlpool (Appliance gripes and advice)

[jono]

GE designed their dishwashers to steam the control board until it fails, so of course they're usually out of stock. Conformal coating looks suspect but cheap ass components probably can't handle the heat anyway.

Repair chick said the door would never be right again. My best XXXer impression said that meant she didn't know how to do it right so I did it myself. Door metal is flimsy, but youtube knows all. It worked out. No more boosted cycles. Fine. It was melting its sprayers anyway.

Obviously (until open source appliances) the right answer is RAID. Two cheap dishwashers. Identical. Learn on the first one. No downtime.

[XXX-er]

GE designed their dishwashers to steam the control board until it fails, so of course they're usually out of stock. Conformal coating looks suspect but cheap ass components probably can't handle the heat anyway.

Repair chick said the door would never be right again. My best XXXer impression said that meant she didn't know how to do it right so I did it myself. Door metal is flimsy, but youtube knows all. It worked out. No more boosted cycles. Fine. It was melting its sprayers anyway.

Obviously (until open source appliances) the right answer is RAID. Two cheap dishwashers. Identical. Learn on the first one. No downtime.

Not sure what you are trying to communicate but I got bosch DW's still on warranty, not GE

[jono]

Well just for future reference in case you get a GE, you can fix those, too, just do an impression of yourself.

[old goat]

My friends Wolf stove--or maybe it was a Viking--caught fire. Fortunately it didn't burn her house down. Of course those are commercial in appearance only.

[Core Shot]

we're on 17 years with our current top and bottom subzero
lots of orthogonal data, as my buddy oftpiste will attest.

we've had 3 of them 12 years on the first one, sold the place, 17 on this one and 12 years on another, no problems yet.

Nice flex

Sub zero is the bomb however. And when they do need repairs it’s worth spending two grand for a ten grand fridge.

Renovated a kitchen in a house in which I do not belong. The 1990 sub zero went into the garage and it’s still working without a service call.
Put an SZ in my mom’s summer cottage when I renovated it around 1995. It needed five hundo in service last year . My dumb ass brother was planning on replacing it with a thousand dollar fridge. Moran.

My last house was all GE. DW and fridge both shit the bed after five years and one day. Fuck GE.

Samsung for fridge. Bosch or Miele for DW. Stoves seem bullet proof on all brands.

[riser4]

I have up on consumer reports a long time ago. I had a bunch of their recommendations turn out to be utter crap.

[MontuckyFried]

Sub zero is the bomb however. And when they do need repairs it’s worth spending two grand for a ten grand fridge.

Renovated a kitchen in a house in which I do not belong. The 1990 sub zero went into the garage and it’s still working without a service call.
Put an SZ in my mom’s summer cottage when I renovated it around 1995. It needed five hundo in service last year . My dumb ass brother was planning on replacing it with a thousand dollar fridge. Moran.

One of the best selling points to me about Sub Zero is that they are built to be SERVICABLE. A super rare thing these days indeed. If I had the money, that's the route I'd go or something of similar caliber.

Samsung for fridge. Bosch or Miele for DW. Stoves seem bullet proof on all brands.

My Samsung stove has in fact, not been bulletproof. Still need to do that fan repair on it. While my Samsung fridge is still working, it's not been perfect. Has needed several repairs and in fact the little hinged panel between the doors has just broken this week. Insane it was like a $3K fridge. I think the former owner spent like $7K for the fridge/stove/microwave/dishwasher suite. NOT worth it for the crap quality of it all. The dishwasher didn't even make it 2 years and I've recently replaced the microwave with a nice Breville unit.

What's even crazier is when you go browse Lowe's/HD, a TON of fridges from all the majors, GE/LG/Samsung/Whirlpool/etc hover around that price point. WTF? For that much money, I'd rather save up and spring for a proper built-in instead.

[m2711c]

I have up on consumer reports a long time ago. I had a bunch of their recommendations turn out to be utter crap.

preach it brother! been suspicious of their output ever since the blatant suzuki hit job that denied us anymore of them sweet assed trackers…





fact.

[mcski]

I’ve seen some sweet lifter samurai’s lately. Makes me want one.

[Crusty]

Got a Samsung french door bottom freezer fridge in 2010. Had no problems with it until this July when it decided to occasionally stop cooling for several days at a time. Decided to replace since the salesman told me the design life on these is 5 years when I bought it. Got the cheapest LG in the same configuration. Seems like a flimsy piece of shit. We'll see.

Had good luck with Maytag DW and dryers. Kitchenade range has been great, DW sucked. Have yet to find a decent washing machine.

I know, "cool story bro".

[unitofstuff]

~2019 I replaced all my [cheap, shitty, and/or missing] appliances with Samsung stuff. Everything except the fridge has been alright. The fridge flooded my shit by letting water flow all night to the tune of about $10k in damage payout and I fought Samsung warranty shit for about 6 months trying to get anything fixed. The icemaker (up in the refrigerator portions, fucking stupid idea) freezes solid about once a month now. When that thing finally shits itself, I'm dumping it about 10ft off the porch into the driveway just so nobody else has to deal with that miserable pile of shit ever again. Fuck Samsung refrigerators.

[nickwm21]

Both Korean brands are challenging to repair, but Samsungs crap put significantly more than LGs. Not sure how anyone with few functional synapses buys a Samsung appliance…

Water in fridges are like the #2 reason for a water loss insurance claim. I’m actually super surprised that insurance companies don’t have a price modification on your policy if you are running a fridge with water… Some appliance installers will not plug in that water connection for laibility reasons….

I posted this in the other appliance thread - but be very very careful buying new appliances right now. There is still a “COVID hangover” working its way thru the manufacturing industry; factories shut down, old skilled hands retired, parts became unavailable; then when factories ramped back up demand was immense, the humans were different, quality control was pushed to the consumer and the warranty department out of need to get stuff out the door…. In my line of work on the commercial side, we’ve seen failure rates of 10-30% of appliances, fixtures, manufactured electronics…


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[MontuckyFried]

While I believe Bosch is great for dishwashers, OP is asking about fridges in which case I don't know. I will be going to my local appliance supply depot today to see if I can score a new convection fan for my oven. Yes, Samsung. Because of course. It's sounds like it's grinding marbles or something. Anyway, I'll ask the guys there for the inside scoop of what they're seeing with newer models' reliability. They usually know what's up.

Alright. Finally got to the parts shop and got my new fan motor. Thankfully it was a SUPER easy repair. Phew! Anyway, I asked them about what the scoop on fridges these days is and the 2 guys at the counter said they've been most impressed with Bosch. Both with fridges and dishwashers of course. Said the repair guys who frequent the shop hardly come in for Bosch stuff and when you DO need parts, they can have them within the week, whereas Samsung, LG and some of the others can be more like 6-8 weeks these days. They said Bosch's product parts support has been second to none between the brands. They said as to the rest of the major brands you see at all the big box stores, yeah, they're all kind of crap these days.

FWIW, I went to Best Buy the same day for something else and they had a GE Cafe fridge that would match my dishwasher and it was $3500. Felt like a pretty chinzy POS. Right next to it was a Bosch fridge that was ALSO $3500 and seemed leagues better at first glance. Much more solid feeling hardware. Might as well go that route for the same $$$.

On the other end of the spectrum, they had basic, sturdy looking refrigerators for around $500-600. No ice makers or water dispensers. No fancy computer nonsense. Probably THE most reliable units in the whole store and not a bad way to go.

[skaredshtles]

<snip>
On the other end of the spectrum, they had basic, sturdy looking refrigerators for around $500-600. No ice makers or water dispensers. No fancy computer nonsense. Probably THE most reliable units in the whole store and not a bad way to go.

Winner winner.

[Core Shot]

Www.ereplacementparts.com

Tools appliances etc
Exploded parts diagrams and most things shipped quickly.
Used them for over a decade.

[singlesline]

So far in a month or so of living here I've managed to replace parts on both fridges we have.

I broke the fan blade on the whirlpool garage fridge (stuck a vacuum in there trying to clean it and bumped the blades while they were spinning). That part was easy enough to source and replace.

The frigidaire kitchen fridge (2-doors on top, freezer on bottom) came to me with a broken part in the hinged thing that flaps back and forth and seals the gap between the doors when closed. This was causing it to not flap shut unless you opened the other door and helped it.

Best I can tell, the fridge is designed in such a way that if someone closes that flap while the door is open and then slams the door shut...one of the hinges is 100% going to break (hopefully newer fridges of this design have solved this problem?).

I was able to source the missing hinge part for a few bucks...but it is impossible to buy the plastic bracket that the hinge attaches to by itself. Fortunately my bracket was only partially cracked and I was still able to get the hinge on it. If the bracket was any more broken, I'd have been stuck buying a $350 door assembly just to deal with one dime sized piece of broken plastic.