Do you love your refrigerator? Hate it? Please share your experience.

Need advice please!  Gotta buy a new fridge pronto.  Our 6-7 year old counter depth Haier refrigerator has died. "Beyond repair" wrote the PSE&G guy. It was a total piece of crap.Researching but not linking any reviews all that much--especially from  folks who've had a fridge for a few years.  Apparently most everything sucks these days. 

Repairman gave lots of advice about what to steer clear of, saying Whirlpool, and Frigidaire are decent bets these days. We would prefer a counter depth, but we can go deeper with some adjustment to the cabinetry. At this point I don't care if its energy star. Our last one was but never cooled evenly, and now it's heading for the landfill. 

We've been lucky the weather has been cold. Everything is in coolers or chilling in the back vestibule. Next week not looking so good tho on that level. And we do love our ice cream...

previous house - counter depth side by side with ice and water dispenser  Kitchenaid was a fantastic fridge.  One of my best appliance purchases ever,  Made tons of ice dispenser a click for water, ice, or crushed ice.  Dual cool feature awesome for fresh food and freezer.

This house -GE cafe French door with dispenser for ice and water.  Hate it hate hate it.  First, French door is beyond awful.  Freezer is like a mini chest freezer- ridiculous to use - becomes a black hole, you have to dig through layers of stuff to have any clue what's in there.   Ice maker makes a tiny amount of ice. Dispenser completely unintuitive - takes too many button pushes to get what you want.  It's only 2 years old but is going to go soon.

My interim rental house had a very inexpensive Frigudaire side by side with ice maker and water dispenser.  Worked fine, but very very noisy compressor and ice machine. 

Good luck with your choice !

GE Profile French door, five years old, dislike it. Limited storage space in fridge, inconvenient arrangement of space is freezer. French doors make it difficult to get large things out of fridge unless you open both doors, and  they do not stay open by themselves very well when you are taking the large item out, sort of have to prop one open with an elbow. Does makes lots of ice, and water from interior dispense reasonably cold but there is always a drip and small puddle on front of veg bin after dispensing. Temperature more or less even except for times when all of a sudden it is not. Would certainly not buy again.

I love mine (a Maytag) but, sadly, they don't make it anymore.  It's over ten years old, so we're probably living on borrowed time.  We got it at Karl's (Orange) in the 'scratch and dent' room and I was happy with that experience.

Two years ago we bought a French Door, bottom freezer Samsung refrigerator and we liked it a lot.  In shopping around we found that the Korean manufactured units (LG, Samsung) were better built than most American units--except for the higher end American units.  The Korean units use better quality sheet metal, have stronger door hinges, and most importantly, come with a 10 year compressor warranty.

Most US companies have been bought up in recent years and are pretty much owned by two companies, so that the only difference between the refrigerators may be the name on the label.  Kenmore is Maytag is Amana is Frigidaire.  Part of the fallout from this is that they have "value engineered" their units to have flimsy sheet metal and compressors that they are not willing to stand behind for 10 years.  It is sad.  Higher end units still seem to be okay (GE Profile, Kenmore higher end), but I do worry about the things I cannot easily see such as compressors.

Of course, months after we bought the Samsung we decided to sell the house, and our new house has a higher end Kenmore--French doors, bottom freezer.  It is from 2010, and we have only been there six months but so far it is quite acceptable.

We shopped both on line and in stores, and we found the best deal to be when Home Depot was having a sale.  They beat the online prices by 10% that week, plus free delivery, install, and removal of the old unit.  They were also lower than the local chains we checked out, at least that week.  I did not bargain with the local chains ("will you meet this price from HD?") but I bet you can if you prefer to use them over a national behemoth, because usually HD's sale is part of a national promotion from the manufacturer which should be available to others if they want it.

(eta) Two years ago a friend bought a GE Profile top and bottom unit, one of the better models, and had a nightmare with it.  Returned it twice.

In our kitchen renovation in 2009 we bought all new GE Profile appliances.  After four years two burners on the stove need to be lit with a lighter, of the 8 screws that secure the sheet metal of the dishwasher interior 3 have rusted, and we have had to have the refrigerator repaired once.  Ice maker in the Frig was great until it broke because there are parts made of plastic(drive shaft is metal, receptacle for the drive shaft is plastic). Microwave has not had any issues.

I would not buy GE Profile again.

RCH

We have a counter depth KitchenAid French door with water inside instead of in the door and the deli drawer. Whirlpool makes KitchenAid, Maytag, IKEA and Jenn-Air too. In this house we have a small space for the refrigerator and the KA was one of the few options that fit that still had a decent amount of space, an ice maker and water dispenser. Plus a door and temp alarm, which I'm glad we have since little people leave the door open often. We've had it for 2 years and it's been great so far. Before that we had a Samsung French door for 5 years at our old house and it was great too. 

LG French door cabinet depth, love it.  Scratch and dent from Karls so it was about an additional $500 less than new model.  The ice maker is in the door, not sticking out into the refrigerator area.  Ice maker is fine for one or 2 people, but in the hottest part of summer it does not make ice (unless shade is drawn sun shines on fridge in late afternoon)  Overall, love it.

I have a friend with a counter depth fridge and ice maker stick out into refrigerator space... takes up the right side shelf area

Frigidaire (made by Electrolux)  side x side purchased in mid 2013... has needed service and replacement parts on the average of every six months...  Fortunately we have a homeowner warranty plan and only pay $75 per service call.  Would not buy another electrolux appliance EVER!

GE Profile side by side/ counter depth, can't wait for it to crash and burn.  The water and ice feature are more temperamental than a prima donna!  Hate the limited space too.  UhOh, just jinxed myself

Funny, but I love my GE profile French door. Not cabinet depth though, full sized. I love the space and the bottom freezer, the water and ice in the door. My doors stay open when I want them to. I would say the one drawback is having to open both doors to get big items in, BUT it fits big items! It's my dream appliance. (Maybe I have low standards... )

I will never have anything other than a bottom-freezer style. I like to see what I have so I can whip up something to eat!  Also, I like the wide shelves for oversized dishes. 

We love our 18 year old, cabinet deep, "Sub Zero-like" Maytag, but it too was discontinued.

Since our previous fridge had issues with the water/ice maker (leaks, pump not working, which led to mold and we stopped using it, and takes up extra space in fridge door area), we got an LG french door with bottom freezer that had no water feature. It has an icemaker in the freezer, but we don't use it (we're not ice people at all).

So far, OK. The freezer space is adequate, can find stuff fine in the freezer with the top small drawer and bottom baskets. Love all the fridge space. But the shelf height is a bit low. You have to put tall bottles in the door, or not have a top shelf on one side.

peteglider said:

previous house - counter depth side by side with ice and water dispenser  Kitchenaid was a fantastic fridge.  One of my best appliance purchases ever,  Made tons of ice dispenser a click for water, ice, or crushed ice.  Dual cool feature awesome for fresh food and freezer.

This house -GE cafe French door with dispenser for ice and water.  Hate it hate hate it.  First, French door is beyond awful.  Freezer is like a mini chest freezer- ridiculous to use - becomes a black hole, you have to dig through layers of stuff to have any clue what's in there.   Ice maker makes a tiny amount of ice. Dispenser completely unintuitive - takes too many button pushes to get what you want.  It's only 2 years old but is going to go soon.

My interim rental house had a very inexpensive Frigudaire side by side with ice maker and water dispenser.  Worked fine, but very very noisy compressor and ice machine. 

Good luck with your choice !

Right that Frigidaire I was looking into...not sure about the noise though. Like, how loud is loud? Would it bother me up on the second floor and a room away (not directly above).

If you needed another reason not to buy a GE:  Haier just purchased it. 

http://refrigerators.reviewed.com/news/china-haier-buying-ge-appliance-unit-for-54b

Sorry to hijack -- since I do want to replace the POS GE French door I have --  why oh why has "French door' become "the thing." -- 

I truly dislike the freezer in the french doors -- its like a chest freezer, you totally lose whats in it (its my only freezer).  And I hate that to open the large drawer in the fridge -- you have to open 2 doors on the fridge  -- usability nightmare!  (other dislikes are GE model specific -- so those don't necessarily count).

If you have  French Door -- would you buy another?  Am I missing the advantages?

thx /p

I might get another French door, if the interior layout seems better designed. People seem to like their Samsungs. I think the freezer my old Maytag side by side held more, and was a little more workable overall so would consider a side by side again. (Thought I would really like the French door  model in my new house, but it looks a lot better on the outside than on the inside.)

We bought new appliances this summer and went with Samsung. So far, so good!

I moved from a side-by-side fridge to a French Door and am really happy with it. I felt like the side-by-side was a storage nightmare. No room for anything that was horizontally wide, and no good way to organize the freezer. We do have a basement fridge/freezer we can use for overflow but I like to have a lot of stuff right there.

One thing that helps in the freezer though is the Samsung has a slide-out shelf. I agree @peteglider with your initial concern about the freezer, that it becomes sort of a cave. But the shelf really helps; I keep smaller things (like bags of vegetables) in the top and save the bottom mostly for the larger Costco-sized bags or things I don't need to use as often. The separation is really helpful.

Also I love the refrigerator part because everything I need is right there at eye level. It feels enormous compared to our old one. I do agree that sometimes opening both doors can be annoying, but it's not necessary for everything I need and doesn't bother me all that much.

Also, I purposely opted to not have a water dispenser. For one thing, I prefer the clean look of the doors without one, and for another it seemed like just one more thing that could break. I'm perfectly fine with just my Brita pitcher inside, and that seems to take up less space than the dispenser would. We have the freezer ice maker which just empties into a tray.

Hubster loves our French door model.  In fact, he was the one that insisted on the style. He hated having to bend down to look inside our old top freezer style one.

I like it much better than a side by side one because you can fit larger sized frozen stuff in the freezer.  I also think that you can see more frozen stuff in the two levels of my bottom freezer than in a top freezer model.

We have a cabinet depth Jenn-Air that has been trouble free for about 10 years.  Our particular model might seem small for a larger family, but works for us.  We never hooked up the water or ice thingy because we wouldn't use it anyway, it just seemed like the source of ick on the one I did have it, and they are one of sources of breakdowns.