Need a new fridge/freezer. Recommendations?

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MurrayM

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#280848 14-Jan-2021 15:18

My 20 year old F&P fridge/freezer has finally decided to quit on me. It's still getting power but not cooling any more. Repair man came and looked at it and said the relay switch had tripped (he thought maybe because of a power surge, although nothing else in the house has been affected). We left it off for a while and turned it back on and it burst into life with the motor working. Repair man said if it happened again then we'd need a new relay switch. Overnight it turned off again by itself. The turn-off-and-wait-half-an-hour trick worked to get it going again but I decided we better have that relay switch replaced. Rang up the repair company and after a while they said that it needed not only a relay switch but also an "overload" (didn't say if this was a switch or something else). The relay switch they could get but not the "overload" as it wasn't made any more.

What options are open to me? I guess I could ring around and see if I can find another repair company that has that part. Maybe I could call F&P themselves, although I guess the first repair company I called should have already done this to try and source the part.

If I have to buy a new fridge then what do people think of the various brands? Some brands I've seen available in NZ: Samsung, Panasonic, Midea, Mitsubishi, Eurotech, LG, Beko, Akai, Bosch, Haier, F&P. Even The Warehouse has their own Living & Co brand.

Is there any difference between F&P and Haier these days?

My budget tops out at $2000 and I don't need anything fancy (eg no water dispenser). Also doesn't need to be huge because it's just for a 2-person household. I'd prefer something that I'll be able to get spare parts for in the future, so that probably rules out the smaller brands and the more exotic brands. Recommendations? Horror stories? Brands to stay away from?

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#2635601 14-Jan-2021 15:31

20 years is a good run. LG and Mitsubishi are consumer recommended brands. Oddly LG is slightly below average reliability, followed by Samsung, Haier, and Beko, so I wouldn't buy any of that last set.

Based on consumer member surveys, Westinghouse, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, F&S, and Bosch (in that order) are rated as most reliable. Customer satisfaction order is Mitsubishi, Panasonic, F&P, Bosch, then Westinghouse (in that order). Looking at the table Mitsi, Panasonic, and F&P all look like good options.

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#2635604 14-Jan-2021 15:35

We have been very happy with our Westinghouse. Hasn't put a foot wrong in 7 years and still looks new (when it is clean!)

MurrayM

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#2635614 14-Jan-2021 15:48

timmmay:

20 years is a good run. LG and Mitsubishi are consumer recommended brands. Oddly LG is slightly below average reliability, followed by Samsung, Haier, and Beko, so I wouldn't buy any of that last set.

Based on consumer member surveys, Westinghouse, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, F&S, and Bosch (in that order) are rated as most reliable. Customer satisfaction order is Mitsubishi, Panasonic, F&P, Bosch, then Westinghouse (in that order). Looking at the table Mitsi, Panasonic, and F&P all look like good options.

Thanks for that, some great info there!

jonathan18

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#2635710 14-Jan-2021 21:44

But it's also worth looking at the specific reliability ratings - average is 90% (ie, 90% haven't ever required repairs), with F&P as an example only just above this (91%) and LG sits exactly on this (90%) and Samsung just behind (89%). Sure, the ones at the extremes (97% for Westinghouse; 77% for Beko) seem quite meaningful, but a five percentage point band from 89-93% captures 5/9 brands in the survey so personally I'd not be swayed too much by the relative ratings of these.

I went through the same thing of looking for a new fridge/freezer a couple of months back - went around the buoy many times, visiting every shop at least a couple of times. We couldn't be happier with what we ended up with, which is an LG; it's a slightly older version of the current No. 1 rated unit on Consumer (a slightly less efficient compressor), but at $1079 (I think) for a 450l unit it was a bargain. As I mentioned in the thread when I sought advice on fridges at the time, we were totally over the total sameness (and same issues) of the interior of F&P units, which still haven't changed that much from the one we first owned nearly twenty years ago. You may notice the same, given you've also had an F&P, but this may not be an issue for you. We find this fridge a real pleasure to use; the only down-side is that there aren't too many alternative placements for shelves - a problem we noted for every brand other than F&P!

The unit we almost went with was the equivalent Samsung; I saw they were doing great prices on that a couple of weeks back, but not sure if it's still the case.

You'll see in that thread I linked to above that we had a sizing issue, ie getting a modern fridge into an existing space. It seems that new fridges have thicker walls and especially doors, assumingly for better insulation. Not sure if this will be an issue for you, or if you're comfortable with what we did (totally missing the min. spacing recommended by LG), but thought I'd mention it...

Stu1

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#2635740 15-Jan-2021 07:37

As above we have the 450 lg really pleased with it way better temperature control compared to the Westinghouse we replaced . The ten year warranty was a good selling point as well couldn’t be happier with it

MurrayM

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#2635784 15-Jan-2021 09:15

Thanks @jonathan18 for the useful info.

At the moment size isn't an issue as it doesn't have to fit within a cabinet, but I don't want to go much bigger than what we already have. That LG you got was a bargain!

I've had someone mention to me that they thought the idea of the overload part not being available seemed odd, and they've offered to reach out to some contacts within F&P, some I'm still hopeful of a repair.

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#2635887 15-Jan-2021 11:15

We nearly went with the LG, it seemed to have more internal space than other fridges with the same external dimensions. But the shop owner warned us off them. She said her customers have been having issues obtaining LG parts as the models age, so we could be stuck with a broken fridge in the future that no one is able to repair. A fridge missing a shelf in 5 years isn't very useful.

There's possibly ways around this by buying them online overseas etc. But it wasn't a hassle we wanted. No idea how accurate her comments were.

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lxsw20

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#2636017 15-Jan-2021 13:38

duckDecoy:

She said her customers have been having issues obtaining LG parts as the models age, so we could be stuck with a broken fridge in the future that no one is able to repair. A fridge missing a shelf in 5 years isn't very useful.

Next to reliability long term parts availability is very important. Is this something consumer look at?

CokemonZ

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#2636037 15-Jan-2021 13:53

anecdotally I have a 10 year old haier side by side.

Never missed a beat, and was ~25% cheaper than any of the other majors at the time.

Stu1

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#2636038 15-Jan-2021 13:55

duckDecoy:
We nearly went with the LG, it seemed to have more internal space than other fridges with the same external dimensions. But the shop owner warned us off them. She said her customers have been having issues obtaining LG parts as the models age, so we could be stuck with a broken fridge in the future that no one is able to repair. A fridge missing a shelf in 5 years isn't very useful.

There's possibly ways around this by buying them online overseas etc. But it wasn't a hassle we wanted. No idea how accurate her comments were.

I hope not we brought one based on new bolds advice which is a really good shop in Wellington, they recommend LG fingers crossed we don’t have that issue

rogercruse

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#2636145 15-Jan-2021 15:59

We purchased a Westinghouse side-by-side fridge-freezer to replace our Samsung model at the end of January last year to take advantage of the Harvey Normal price guarantee. This offer "saved us" about two hundred dollars!.

The Samsung machine was only eight years old and worked well but was badly rusted by the drink dispenser. We were also moving so left it for the new homeowners. The two models are basically identical apart from the Westinghouse water filter cartridges are cheaper and the the ice making machine is slightly easier to access on the Westinghouse.

ratsun81

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#2636169 15-Jan-2021 17:19

My 13 year old westinghouse double door is on its way out, its having issues cooling down to expected temps as well as freezing items and have just had to throw out some milk 2 days before expiry due to it curdling.

Its had some issues for a while with knocking when the compressor kicks on. When checking out new Westinghouse fridge's we noticed that the plastics are very cheap feeling now and with previous experience of broken plastic shelves im not going to recommend the brand.

This time round ive gone with a Mitsubishi as a replacement.

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mrdrifter

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#2636190 15-Jan-2021 18:43

Has anyone purchased one of the French door style fridge/freezers recently? We are just considering the quad door style for the flexibility and looking for real world feedback. Nothing wrong with our current bottom mount fridge/freezer mechanically, it's mostly a space and kitchen update.

33coupe

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#2638185 19-Jan-2021 14:06

I havent got my fridge yet so I cant really comment. but after extensive research, Mitis are the ones to have. My budget couldnt stretch that far so I ended up going with the LG GF-L570MBL

As soon as I tried the quad french door (after trying every fridge in CHC), it was a deal breaker for me (in addition to plumbed water). It should be more efficient opening just one door, and can see all items in the freezer, rather than having to dig around looking underneath everything etc with the one big drawer types.

dt

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#2638269 19-Jan-2021 15:45

We got one of these F&P 605L double door fridges feb last year, to replace our 12 year old F&P fridge freezer we bought before kids, which has now been repurposed to as a drinks fridge / meat freezer in the garage.

We were originally looking at LG but ive read some horror reviews online about them and the whiteware sales rep at harvy norman warned us away from LG due to the amount of services they have to book for them.

He told us go either Westinghouse or F&P, since we already had a problem free F&P for many years that's what helped us to decide.

The freezer part is great, you can climate control either size of the freezer doors to different temps so you can keep meat / ice cream very cold but not frozen then keep the frozen veges on the other side. The freezer bins are quite convenient as well, they roll out so its easy to organise what goes where, 6 bins in total.

The drinks rack in the fridge is awesome as well, has a rapid chill function.. ice cold drinks in 5-10 mins !

If you hook it up to water mains you can set the ice maker to make ice and it drops into an ice bucket, dunno how it does it but it never overflows either.. drink heaps more water as well now the fridge has the water chiller on the front, bonus!

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