Quick! Fridge died- give me your recommendation

[liz]

Gah, we just got back from vacation today, to find that our fridge died. All the food spoiled :(.

Anyhoo, looks like we'll be shopping tomorrow for a new fridge. We currently have a side by side with an automatic ice maker located inside the freezer(not the door). I wanted the side by side because I cook and freeze a lot of food.

I am interested in the bottom freezer fridge. Does anyone have any experience with them? Pros and Cons? TIA

I hate having to buy big ticket items on such short notice.

[LMPC]

Oh nooooo! So sorry to hear that you came back to a mess!!!

We have an LG side by side with bottom freezer. No ice/H2O in the door -- just didn't want to pay for it KWIM?! We don't miss it. I like the bottom freezer since I go into it less often than I go into the fridge...it's out of the way and more of my go to food is at eye level. We are not big fans of best buy, but I think that's where we ended up getting it from.

GL with the shopping!

[shawnandangel]

I recommend you go to Consumer Reports, pay $5 and get their reviews! That's what my husband and I do when anything dies. Then we cancel our membership until something else dies. :)

I print out all the info, compare it, figure out what I like. Then I go to the store and compare the items in person that I liked from consumer reports. I take my print out from Consumer Reports with me to help me keep the different items straight in my head.


Also would check and make sure your problem is not something easily fixable. I would definately try and get a technician out and figure out what went wrong before I spend hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars on an item. It may be an easy $100 fix and your fridge will last another 10 years. Who knows?

[SnuggleBuggles]

Step 1- kick the fridge. We thought ours was dead. We were all set to buy a new one when dh just kind of kicked our broken one and all of a sudden it whirred back to life! That was 4 years ago and no problem since!

Otherwise, ITA with the CR recommendation.

Beth

[katydid1971]

I just paid $500 to repair my LG fridge :32: Not a recomendation, a warning.

[catsnkid]

I just bought a regular kenmore, but would probably stick with the brand.

[SpaceGal]

Our fridge "died" over the summer, we have a side by side GE. It stopped chilling...so we'd have to thaw out the coils and it would work again...last about say 4-5 days....defrost again. We functioned on minimal cold food storage for that time but it saved us a lot of money. After some research, it was a $50 part that broke. We had to take the fridge apart, just the inside back panel of the freezer side and replaced a defrost heater. It took say an hour to replace the heater and tada...it's been working since July, saved ourselves $1000 or so bucks.

If you can spare some time check out this site...they had a lot of insight and I'm grateful we spent a few days to research and fix it.
http://applianceguru.com/forum1/

ETA: the part that broke on ours was a defrost heater.

[kbud]

We came home to a broken fridge and spoiled food over the summer. It was a $160 fix. The exact same part broke on my parents fridge a year ago. It was about the same price. I was told by both repairman that it is a very common part that never lasts as long as the fridge. Of course I don't remember the part but it was about a $60 part.

[Babymakes3]

I have known my repairman for years and he is very knowledgeable so I trust his opinion being that he deals with appliances daily. My GE fridge was nothing but a headache so when it broke again we started looking at new ones. He rec'd Kenmore and Whirlpool, I think there was a 3rd but I can't remember what it was.
Definitely stay far away from GE and Frigidaire! I bought a Whirlpool from hhgregg, they are great to deal with btw! The only thing I don't love about my fridge is how the drawers slide now that they are full, they slid fine empty but it takes 2 hands and some maneuvering to shove that back in now.
Best Buy had either a Samsung or an LG that I really liked and probably would have bought had it not been going to take almost a week for them to deliver it, my entire fridge and contents were frozen solid.

My only other piece of advice he told me was not to buy a side by side with the ice maker that hangs on the inside of the freezer door, apparently they have alot of problems. (mine has the icemaker at the top of the freezer)

[nellonello]

I love our side by side with bottom freezer. Our freezer has three drawers which I like better than our previous one with 2 drawers. It seems ti keep things a bit more organized. We also opted to go with just a water dispenser on the door as it seemed the ice maker took up too much fridge space. But we don't use a lot of ice so it isn't too inconvenient to open the freezer when we want ice.

[MamaSnoo]

We have a Kenmore side by side fridge on top, freezer drawer on bottom with 2 drawers. I do like having the two drawers instead of the others I have seen with a single compartment. We have had ours for 2 years, no problems. (We need a knock-on-wood smilie!)

Sorry about your fridge and your stinky mess.

[tiapam]

I think some appliances qualify for energy saving federal tax credit. If so it may just be certain models. Could take some of the bite out.

[dhano923]

This happened to me last week. Came hom from work on Friday and the fridge was dead. I put in a service call with Sears and a tech came out Saturday afternoon. Turns out the compressor died. $300 later, the fridge was up and running. It was worth getting fixed for us as opposed to spending $2000+ right now since we plan on remodeling our kitchen next year.