It’s official, I have bad luck with appliances repair. First it was the AC, now it’s the fridge. What is suppose to be a routine repair, became a long drawn out nightmare. It all started on the 4th of July weekend when my GE fridge started to lose its cool that eventually lead to a total meltdown (the ice maker dripped water). Like all naive home owners, I opened the yellow pages and started calling the cheapest repair guy. I called “Airflow Appliance Service” and they sent this funny looking Russian guy to tinker with the fridge. He said the main PCB (Printed Circuit Board) was dead, so he tried to replace it. Didn’t work. Next he said it might be a problem with the “inverter”, but since he didn’t have one handy, he had to order one. After paying him $40 for the service call, we waited, and waited about 3 weeks for the parts! Fed up with the wait, I called them to try and cancel the order/repair, so instead they insisted on trying to fix it again. The Russian guy came back, said he had a new wonder board (PCB), but this time he said I had a bad compressor! So at this point I said, fuggedabouddit, and I’ll go shop for a new fridge. He left and I started searching for new fridges online. I measured my fridge and the depth was only about 29″, which I found out to be a pretty expensive deal for a fridge!
Then I said fine, maybe it’s cheaper to get it fixed instead, so I went ahead and called GE Appliance Service and they sent someone to take a look… the week after (they were apparently busy). A GE repair guy showed up, examined my fridge, and dropped a bomb shell on me: the previous repair guy snatched the inverter! What’s worse, even GE didn’t have the replacement parts so I also have to order it. Now, not only I had wait some more, I also had to deal with the previous repair guy to return the stolen part. The Russian guy came back and tried to explain to me that he was just trying to test if it worked or not at another site. In reality, he probably tried to sell it to someone else.
Fast forward to August 24, I returned from a 2 week vacation, got the parts that was delivered, tried to schedule GE to install them – they were booked until September 11 (apparently they were really busy)! That was another 2+ weeks worth of wait! I said, oh well, we waited this long, might as well. Another GE repair guy finally showed up today, installed the parts, and HALLELUJAH the fridge was fixed! So after more than 2 months wait, I finally got a full fridge again. Whoohoo, it’s good to able to get more food in storage, but more importantly we have ice again!
Now the Master Card moment: Service Calls – $210. Inverter – $481. PCB Kit – $203. Being able to tell/blog yet another long story – Priceless.
Building IT
Jot It Down
Ditto! It’s like you described what’s happening to us!
Hey Nathan,
The sad part is, a year later, the fridge is now making these funny rattling noises. I’m ready to trash this fridge and get a new one.
[…] my old fridge woes came back. The “old” GE fridge started to form icicles inside the freezer, and the […]
hi Rudy,
I sorry it cost that much to fix your fridge, and then the repair only lasted a year, but the story about the Russian stealing a part from your fridge is truly “priceless” as you say. Sorry for the ordeal, but it’s a great story that I’m sure you’ll remember for a long time.
~ Steve, aka “trade show displays”
PS. I would have excepted better from a “GE” product, and am very surprised.
PPS. Was the “borrowed” inverter bad after all? You mention a replacement price for it…
That’s what this blog is for… I don’t want to forget experiences like this.
I think the problem with big companies, like GE, is they get complacent and produce crap products after a few decade of good ones. They just don’t innovate or (don’t bother to) produce good products any more.
As for the inverter, that Russian guy took the part and used it elsewhere. I asked for it back and he didn’t give mine back. I didn’t want to take any chances so I bought all new parts from GE.
still you should get your old part from that Russian guy.
Freezer appliance repairs don’t have to be expensive, in fact they could work out to be a lot cheaper than buying new if you book through a company with a trusted reputation. Don’t try to repair a broken fridge in an attempt to save money if you don’t know what you’re doing as you might well end up having to spend more.
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