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Friday, February 17, 2006

Fridge Trauma

In the past 5 months, I have had to call the wonderful people at Maytag 5 times to come out and fix my refrigerator. Every time, it has been the same problem: it's not cold enough, i.e. the freezer isn't physically freezing food and/or the fridge is also no cold enough, so there is a constant supply of soured food in my fridge. Lovely. Not to mention every time the repair guy comes out, I have to take off work, which is not a luxury I really have seeing as my vacation supply has been negative since I started this job.

Every time the repair comes out, there is a different problem, with the same result - something needs to be replaced. So the condenser, evaporator, coils and freon tubes have been replaced so far. Last week the evaporator was replaced.

Last night I am sitting on my couch when I hear a sound like water hitting a very hot skillet. That sizzling sound. I look at my fridge instantly because I just KNOW that that is it. This is not a sound one usually associates with a fridge - the sound of heat - but with my fridge, he is the likely guilty party of all the appliances in my kitchen.

After pulling apart the panel in the back of my freezer, it becomes evident that something is melting onto a very hot coil at the bottom, hence the sizzling sound. Now we smell burning. I instantly make a mental note to myself to buy a fire-extinguisher the next time I go to the hardware store.

So when deciding that yet ANOTHER trip from the repairman is necessary (to fix whatever he screwed up last time), we plug the fridge back into the wall - BAD IDEA. The coils in the fridge start smoking instantly. I'm no mechanic, but I'm pretty sure that's a bad sign. At this point, I'm wishing I didn't cheat my way through thermodynamics and paid attention to the refrigeration cycle chapter. I panic. I call my Dad - as embarrassing as that is. I hate calling parents for stuff like that because I feel like at 25, you should have a grip on things like this. But I also know from experience that my Dad is better at yelling at customer service people and gets his way more often than not, if anything, just because he retired and has the time to bug them every 20 minutes if necessary.

Dad, as I suspected, came to the rescue and the repair guy is coming out [AGAIN] today and my Dad will handle it for me. Let's hope this time the fridge works for more than a month. I'm hoping, but honestly, I'm doubting.

Meanwhile I'm looking for a new fridge online. A non-Amana brand fridge.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a definite adventure courtesy of the lovely folks at Amana. Where has customer service and product reliability gone? I feel that it is nearly impossible to actually purchase a product these days that is actually worth what was paid. Were did this all go wrong? At what point in history was there a metamorphic shift from good to bad......or was it ever really good?

-Sometimes I like Lemons

Anonymous said...

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