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Skyglider, I feel your pain on the Whirlpool refrigerator. Ours is about 2 years old and our refrigerator freezes everything on the lower 2 shelves. Eggs, produce, leftovers....frozen. We had repair guys in during the 1 year warranty period who couldn't fix it, then strung us out until the warranty expired. Recently tried appealing to Whirlpool and got the expected "we value you as a customer, but you're out of warranty, sorry."
So count me as well among those who will never buy another Whirlpool product.
BTW, the ice maker is also non-functional.
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Just LIL, and not a rant.
Got a 6 year old KitchenAid...made by Whirlpool. The the ice door broke and fell out on the floor last Saturday AM. Took it apart and found a broken tab/bracket was part of the dispenser housing and not replaceable....unless you buy the door for $800.
Little Googling later, found Whirlpool made a repair kit (metal frame adhered with super sticky two sided tape, $50). Ordered it 2 PM Saturday via Amazon Prime, arrived Sunday noon (!). Repaired in 20 minutes...so far so good. Only complaint is that the original is a crappy design and evidently a very common problem. Whirlpool should be providing the kits for free.
But I guess it could have been worse.
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we have always had freezer on top refrigerators, and the icemakers on those are pretty simple and work forever. Then I started working on my mother's house, and her side by side refrigerator had an icemaker that was just about pointless. It would fill up and freeze. Finally just turned it off, but that's not a good solution
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New icemaker installed. Just heard it squirt water into the tray so maybe it will actually work for a while.
Mike
If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room!
But not today...
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We have been considering a new refrigerator. The French Door models have caught our eye, seems like an effective use of space. But so many of the models have the ice makers and water dispensers on the door. Reading reviews and talking to friends it seems like the door dispenser icemaker technology leaves a lot to be desired. Do they all leak and /or break? Just about every complaint - every make and model is about the ice and water dispensers. Do they make high end refrigerators without the ice and water? I am used to opening the freezer and scooping a few cubes and heading to the sink for tap water. I'd much rather do that than put up with the crap I'm hearing about leaks, spills and repairs.
E
Thankyouthankyouverymuch.
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Location: east coaster
we recently got a french door LG with just the icemaker in the freezer drawer. so far so good!
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JackW said:
Skyglider, I feel your pain on the Whirlpool refrigerator. Ours is about 2 years old and our refrigerator freezes everything on the lower 2 shelves. Eggs, produce, leftovers....frozen. We had repair guys in during the 1 year warranty period who couldn't fix it, then strung us out until the warranty expired. Recently tried appealing to Whirlpool and got the expected "we value you as a customer, but you're out of warranty, sorry."
So count me as well among those who will never buy another Whirlpool product.
BTW, the ice maker is also non-functional.
ADDITIONAL WHIRLPOOL REFRIGERATOR PAIN:
I recently had to replace the gasket around the freezer door. The gasket cost $110 but no labor since I replaced it myself. Had to replace because a crack developed in the top part of the gasket. The crack allowed humidity into the top part of the freezer forming ice all along the upper 1/4 of the freezer. The ice would jam the top door switch in the closed position so the freezer's light would not come on when the freezer door was opened.
I never had to replace any gasket on our old GE refrigerator in the 20+ years we had it. So much for Whirlpool quality. (I'm now wondering when the refrigerator door's gasket will crap out.)
Skyglider
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OK---first off a few people here always give me a ration of crapola whenever I refer to Consumer Reports. For those interested, they rate ice makers is the single biggest repair item on just about any make of refrigerator.
I grew up in a family that was still using ice trays and like replacing the toilet paper or paper towel roll---no one every bothered refilling the trays----so one of the creature comforts I insisted on when on my own was an ice maker. And yes, I've replaced my share of them.
Like many electronic gizmos, in my experience they go bad in less than a year, or will go for years without a problem. Actually I've found that the generic replacements sometimes last longer than a direct manufacturer's replacement part.
A few years ago, we had problem after problem with several refrigerators. About the stupidest model we had was a french door with the ice through the door and the ice maker in the refrigerator compartment. Not only did this take up all sorts of room, but only worked half the time. I had to replace it in 6 months---just before I became totally fed up with the unit as a hole.
Our best luck has always been with the ice maker in the freezer, dispensing cubes into a bin. The space it takes is minimal and who cares if you have to open a door to get ice.
I have learned you need to keep any vents in the freezer unblocked.
The main problems seem to develop when there's been a change in freezer temp.---like when you leave the door open or load a bunch of unfrozen food in all at once----or have shut off the unit to clean it. In all these cases it seems to throw off the water fill cycle. It's best to shut off the ice maker and restart it only after the freezer is once again cold.
Dave
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Gave up on ice makers long ago.
City water here sucks for taste .
$1.65 20lb bag crushed or block
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3finger said:
We have friends that have an under counter, stand alone ice maker. I think it's a KitchenAid. Pretty much unlimited supply of CLEAR ice. They are pricey, but when we redo our kitchen, we will seriously look at installing one.
We recently finished a kitchen renovation and we installed a Hoshizaki under counter ice maker. Tons of cubelet ice. It runs a lot and needs some periodic maintenance (once or twice a year) since it's sensitive to scale buildup. However, having tons of ice available is awesome and I'm glad we got it (though it was pricey).
That aside and in response to the OP, we've had a bunch of fridges over the years and never had any problems with the built-in ice maker (knock on wood). Only issue is that we go through a lot of ice so sometimes they had trouble keeping up.
