Transcription
Well, now let me tell you what I don't do before I tell you anything else. I don't fix refrigerators. I fix washers and dryers. That's it. That's the whole business so far. And and that was a decision. It wasn't an accident.
I picked up this trade after I retired. And I decided right then that I was going to fix two things right instead of six things halfway. And a man my age doesn't need to be hauling refrigerators all over Allen Parish. besides. So, I stayed in my lane and I've been there ever since. So, why in the world would you take refrigerator advice from somebody like me? And that's a fair question and I'm going to answer it now.
I've been making washer and dryer videos for years, and I'll be honest with you, I'm running out of new videos to make. Uh there's only so many ways that you can rebuild a direct drive transmission. And at some point, you've got it covered. But the questions keep coming in and they aren't all about laundry. Folks are writing me and they say, "Chip, uh my refrigerator shot. What do I buy?" And for a long time, I just told them the truth. I don't know. That's not my machine.
Then I got to thinking about that answer and I didn't like it much because here's the thing. I may not turn a wrench on refrigerators, but I know this industry from the inside. I know how these manufacturers treat the men who have to fix their machines, and I know what it's like to wait 3 weeks on a part that ought to be sitting on the shelf. I know how to read a service manual and a wiring diagram. And I know the difference between a machine built to be worked on and one built to be thrown away. And before any of that, I spent four years in college learning how to research a topic and how to tell a good source from a bad one.
So, I did what I know how to do. I went and I did the homework. And I'm going to show you every bit of it so you can uh check me. And here's my method. There's four things.
First, I went and I got real service data, not opinions, not reviews, actual numbers. There's an appliance dealer up in Boston called Yale Appliance and every year they publish something almost nobody else in this business is willing to publish. They publish how many of the machines they sold came back for service in the first year. Last year that was 33,190 service calls. 33,000. Now that outfit sells appliances. They have got a dog in this fight and you ought to know that. And their numbers only cover the brands that they carry. So Samsung and Frigid Air are not going to be included here and I'll come back to that but it's real data from real houses and there's precious little of that anywhere else.
Now second I pulled Consumer Reports and they test a in a laboratory and they survey owners and that's a different method. It's a different bias and is exactly why I wanted it. Now, when two sources that work completely differently agree on something, you can't you can believe that. And when they disagree and they do in one important place, well, that tells you something, too. And I'm going to show you exactly where.
Now, third, I looked at the machine itself, not what anybody said about it. The design, where the parts are, what they're being asked to do, and what will happen to them over the next 10 years. Now, that part I can do. That's just being a tradesman.
And fourth, I talked to some folks that actually fix these things. I've gotten to know a handful of appliance pros through this channel over the years. There are men who work on refrigerators every day in different parts of the country. And I asked them what I would want to know if I were the one buying them.
Now, that's my whole method, data, a second source, the machine, and the men who work on it. Now, let me show you what came out of it.
Everything I found comes back to one part, the ice maker. Now, those Yale people with their 33,000 service calls, the single most serviced item they see across every appliance in the store is a refrigerator ice maker. That's number one. Nothing else is close. And once you understand why, you cannot unsee it. Look at where they put it. On most French door uh style refrigerators, ice maker sits up in the the fresh food compartment and that's on the refrigerator side. And your refrigerator is working every minute of every day to keep the fresh food compartment about 37° F. That's above freezing. And that's on purpose. That's so your milk doesn't turn into a brick. Now, right in the middle of that or next to it, they have asked a machine to make ice and keep it frozen at or below 32° and hold it there. So, the refrigerator is fighting itself every single day forever. And what you get out of that fight is exactly what you expect. You get leaks, you get fill lines that freeze up solid, you get shoots that clog, you get door seals that give out, you get a bucket full of slush instead of of ice cubes. And that's not a bad brand. That is not a limit. That is a design fighting physics. And physics doesn't lose.
And here's the number that ought to stop you cold. Every brand that made Yale's most reliable list came in under 10%. Every one of them across the whole store, washers, dryers, ranges, dishwashers. Now, Yale's most reliable counterdepth refrigerator brands, 10.1%. better than one in 10 came back for service in the first year. And that's the best one. So, the best refrigerator on the lot couldn't even make the list. Uh, refrigerators are the problem child of this entire industry. And the fancier you go, the more true that gets.
All right. So, what do you buy? I'm going to give it to you in three steps. From the boring answer to the one you probably want.
Step one is the boring answer, and it happens to be the right one. If what you want is a refrigerator that runs for 15 years and never sees a technician, buy a top freezer. No dispenser in the door, no ice through the front. Consumer Reports has been saying this for years and everybody ignores it because a top freezer looks like something out of your grandmother's kitchen. But their reasoning is airtight and it leads to the same conclusion I reached from the other direction. Top freezers score the highest predicted reliability of any style. And the reason is simple. They do not have the parts that break. No ice maker in the warm side, no dispenser, no water line running up through the door. You cannot have a failure in a part that's not there.
Now, [clears throat] before I give you model numbers, let me save you some grief. These manufacturers change model numbers constantly. And most of the time, they are not changing the machine. They are changing a letter on the end because it's a different color or because it's going to a different store. It's got the same guts, the same parts, but with a different sticker on it. So, if you go looking for what I name here and you find something with one letter off or a number bumped up by one, that is very likely the same refrigerator. Don't panic about it. But do check one thing. Look at the specs and make sure the cubic feet and the dimensions still match what I told you because every now and again, uh, they really do change the machine and keep the family name. That's rare, but it does happen. and you want to match the size and the layout and you have almost certainly got the right one.
Here's what I'd buy. The one that I'd point you to is the Whirlpool WRT518SZFM. It has 18 cubic feet, 28 in wide, and the ice maker is an add-on kit. It does not come standard, which in my book is a feature, not a shortcoming. It runs about $800 in the summer of 2026. Now, that is a plane machine, and plain machines last.
Now, step two. You want a French door anyway. I know. I know you do. Most people do. And I'm not going to lecture you about it because the misses insist on one in my house. It's your kitchen and it's your money. So, if you're buying a French door, here's what the data points to. Consumer Reports scores Bosch as the top French door brand. And here's the part that got my attention. Among all the French door brands that Consumer Reports rates, only two earned a good mark for predicted reliability, just two, Bosch and Fisher and PA. Every other brand came up short.
Now, Yale Appliance keeps its own numbers and they're a different animal. Their claims come from actual service calls on the machines that they sell, not predictions. In their data, Bosch sits right at near the top of the pack. So, you've got two outfits measuring the reliability two completely different ways. One is predicting how the fridge will hold up down the road and the other's counting on how often they get called out to fix one. They don't line up on every brand, but they both put Bosch up near the top. Now, when two different methods land on the same name, that's the one that I'm going to bet on. The model is the Bosch B36CD52SNS. And here's a perfect example of what I just told you. Until recently, that same refrigerator was the B36CD50s. Now, Bosch bumped it up from a 50 to a 52 and kept the machine the same 21.6 cubic feet, the same counter depth, and the same ice system. So, if you run across the old 50 on a closeout somewhere, that's going to be the same box for uh less money. So, grab it. It runs around $3,400, but the prices swing a lot among the big box stores. So, you shop around for it.
Now, I told you I would show you where my two sources disagree. So, here it is. Yale Service Data says that LG is the most reliable counterdepth refrigerator that they sell, best in the store. Consumer Reports flags LG French doors as more prone to compressor trouble than the competition. And that's the same brand. Two credible sources, opposite conclusions. So, which is it? Now, I'm thinking that both are telling the truth. And here's why. LG went to a linear compressor years back and they had a a bunch of trouble with it. Enough trouble that it wound up in court. And that happened, and I'm not going to stand here and pretend that it didn't. But LG also sells an enormous number of refrigerators. And when you sell millions of anything, even a small failure rate, it's going to produce a mountain of angular people on the internet. Yale's own numbers put that compressor failure at right around 1% over 5 years out of more than 160,000 service calls. Now, 1%'s not nothing. If it's your refrigerator, it's 100%. But it's also not that LG's junk, which is what the internet's going to tell you, and that's what a real answer looks like. It is not a clean one. Anybody who hands you a clean answer on this is selling you something.
Now, here's the part I care most about. This is the one place where I know exactly what I'm talking about. Before you buy any refrigerator, any brand, any price, find out who's going to fix it. Not can it be fixed, who, which shop in your area with a phone number because that's the fellow who's going has to take that phone call and he's the one who has to look you in the eye and tell you that the part's on back order and he doesn't know when it will arrive. I've had to say that more times than I care to count and it never gets easier. So, let me tell you plain. A reliable machine that nobody local will touch is worse than an average machine with a good technician 20 minutes down the road. That's not reflected in consumer reports and that's not on a spec sheet. That is the whole ball game and almost nobody's going to tell you that.
And while we're on it, let's talk about Samsung. You will notice Samsung does not appear anywhere in the Yale numbers I've been quoting. That's because Yale doesn't sell them. So, they've got no data on them. And that's honest and I'm telling you uh rather than hiding it. What I will tell you is this, and this comes from my own shop, not somebody else's. Samsung is the hardest brand I deal with when it comes to getting parts on the laundry side where I actually work. And that's the same company, the same parts network, and the same policies that supply the refrigerators. Draw your own conclusion. I am just telling you what I run into.
Now, a couple of things I'm deliberately leaving out, and I want you to know I'm leaving them out on purpose. I'm not going to tell you there's a lawsuit money waiting for you there. There's a lot of chatter online about refrigerator class actions and settlement checks, and some of it's real. A lot of it websites trying to farm your clicks. I could not verify most of what's floating around out there, so I'm not going to repeat it. If I cannot check it, I do not say it. And I'm not going to hand you a list of 10 refrigerators with 10 links. I found two machines I'd actually stand behind. And that's what I've got. If I patted that out to 10 just to give you more to click on, you ought to stop listening to me. And speaking of that, yes, there are links below. And yes, if you buy through them, I make a few dollars. That's how I keep the lights on around here. It did not change one word of what I just told you. And now you know, so you can weigh it however you like.
So there it is. If you want it to last, get the top freezer, the Whirlpool WRT518SZFM, plain as a fence post, and it will outlive your kitchen. You want the French door, the Bosch B36CD52S. It is the one brand at two different sources using two different methods, both put at the top. And whatever you buy, call a repair shop in your town first and ask them if they work on it. Uh, do that before you spend the money, not after. I don't fix refrigerators, but I know how to research one, and I know what happens after the warranty runs out because I live in that part of the story every single day. If this was useful to you, there's a whole lot more where it came from. And if it's a washer or a dryer that you're after, well, now you're in my wheelhouse. Thanks for watching. I'm Chip and I'm