Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Anyone buy a new refrigerator lately? Mine's dead.

Seeking totally off topic, non A/V buying advice again…. Anyone gone fridge shopping lately that might have some buying advice to share????

Looks like it’s time for a new fridge……. Mine died and I can’t find anyone within 300 miles to check it out. I’d have close to a grand in travel expenses alone, plus whatever parts / labor ended up being to fly someone here to check the stupid thing out. So now I’m looking at refrigerators. I’d much rather be looking at power tools or A/V gear or photography gear, but oh no……I have to buy a fridge.

These new fridges with the reefer on the bottom look cool. I always did hate my side by side unit as it just didn’t hold much. I have to have an ice and water dispenser and can not be wider than 36”. Other than that, I’m clueless. Oh, it needs to be stainless to match my counters and the rest of the appliances.

Sorry to hear about your fridge, Michael. Not sure how much advice I can offer up but I spent some time looking at new fridges with my neighbour who's wife insisted they replace a perfectly working one with a more "updated" one. Anyway, we have a couple of local Sears Clearance/Liquidation outlets, so that is where they started to look. They decided on a "counter depth" Kenmore refridgerator with the freezer on the bottom(swing door, not pull out). I can't speak for all Kenmore fridges, but this particular one was made by Samsung which has virtually the same unit under their own name.

As far as stainless goes, there are different types. Some are "no marr" where others seem to leave a lot of finger prints, so that might be something to keep in mind. Counter depth fridges CAN be more expensive than regular depth fridges, but if your limited to width you might want the extra depth of the standard fridge.

Although you've probably ruled out another side by side, I've heard some complaints about certain brands(LG? I think it was) in that the seals on each door rub together when they close, thereby wearing out the seal prematurely(in this case, only 1 year).

Also make sure if you choose a bottom freezer, that it has some room in it. I've noticed some of the pull out style are very restricted spacewise.

If you are not going side by side then freezer on the top are generally more efficient. (Cold air falls ya know). But you must weigh convience.

I have a friend has one that has the freezer on the bottom. It shure is a hastle having to get down on your knees to get ice cubes out of it.

I love the side by side unit that came with my house. It’s the first one I’ve ever owned. The freezer section holds more than any standard size over/under model I’ve ever had and it’s way easier to get things in and out of it with all the shelves, including in the door. Maybe it’s the side by side model you have just has a small freezer section?

Otherwise I’d go freezer on top as having it on the bottom would IMO be a pain.

I wouldn't want the freezer on the bottom either. Ours has some age on it and if I were in the market I think I'd be looking at a side by side.

You need a fridge this time of year??

Well, he does need to keep some things warmer than freezing, one assumes.

Bingo.

We have friends that have one of those. It's a really nice fridge, and having the frozen stuff on the bottom is fine. Except, of course, for the ice cubes. While it's not quite the case that you literally have to get down on your knees, but you do sort of have to bend over and root around to get ice cubes.

We had a really bad experience with a GE refrigerator. From the fridge's problems and the way GE treated us in simply trying to get a working fridge, we now shy away from GE products in general if we can help it. In a nutshell, we paid $1,500+ for a "premium" fridge. It never worked correctly and GE was incredibly uncooperative in trying to resolve the problems. Too cold, too hot (multiple occasions of a fridge full of ruined food), ice maker quit, touchpad quit. It required four service visits from rude GE repairmen the first year while under warranty. GE always conveniently "lost our case file" between the fixes (even when given case #'s, names, dates, invoices, etc) , so they refused to acknowledge or believe that it was simply a lemon.

Three months after the one-year warranty expired, it ceased working again. The repair estimate was $600+ to replace (another) failed logic board. At that point, I was done.

The best day in that fridge's life was when a local appliance store gave me $100 trade-in allowance for it on a new fridge. We bought a Frigidaire that has been quietly doing it's job, day-in and day-out, for the past five years.

michael_d,

We have a Fisher and paykel french door fridge which we have been really impressed with.

The freezer is down below in a drawer fashion with continuous ice. The top two doors open into the same cavity at the top. It has a water filtration system built in too.

We have found it fits the bill. Their after sales service was top rate too.