It came with the house, so we’ve had essentially free use of it for three-and-a-half years (or, conversely, you could look at it as us paying two hundred grand for a refrigerator, with a house thrown in).
But things are defrosting and it has that “dead refrigerator” stale-type smell.
We have to go fridge shopping this afternoon after I get home from work.
We can’t afford it, but we can’t afford to not have a refrigerator, either.
I’m hoping wherever we go will offer A) immediate delivery and B) a payment plan. We can probably make a balloon payment in a week or two, but right now we’re tapped out.
Curse end-of-the-month commission checks. My mid-month paycheck is piddling, but I’m expecting nearly three times as much on May 31.
Great timing, huh? Of course, there’s never a good time to get kicked in the cojones, is there?
Especially with a refrigerator. If your dishwasher dies, you can wash dishes by hand while you decide what to replace it with. If your range dies, you can eat sandwiches and salads, and nuke frozen dinners, for a week or two while you peruse the ads. Your washer or dryer dies, there are laundromats. But with a fridge, there’s really no Plan B.
My main advice would be to hit your library when it opens this morning, and check the most recent Consumer Reports ratings of refrigerators. Photocopy that, and take it with you when you shop. Armed with that, you’ll know whether there are any brands to avoid, and whether a particular price on a given make is a good deal or not.
And the cheapest fridge out there is probably just that - cheap. You don’t need all the bells and whistles, but try to buy a good one that’ll last; it’s cheaper over the long run. (The wife and I love our Amana, fwiw.)
Advice after researching all the appliances for our new home - Stay away from Maytag and GE fridges. Whirlpool and Figidaire’s “budget” fridges are a pretty safe bet.
The good news out of all this: Fridges nowadays use about 1/2 the electricity of units that are only 5+ years old. Your power bill should go down.
DAVEW0071 - yeah, same story here. Mine died about a month ago. We bought a Whirlpool (2nd from the top model) and Lowes gave us free delivery, free disposal of the old fridge, free installation and no interest financing until January 2004. Granted, they don’t just hand this stuff to you - you have to ask. By the way, I fell in love with the Frigidaires, but they don’t score well on Consumer Reports (I have an online subscription).
I heard of that, too. What I did was call the 5 appliance repair shops in town and spoke to them for a while. They all said they rarely see new Frigidaires. However, Maytags are awful and GEs have a nasty habbit of breaking right when the warranty runs out and their parts cost a fortune.
My uncle had a fridge that made the weirdest noises when it was going on the blink. I don’t know exactly how to describe it other than. . . Imagine a little dog–too small to give a good throaty bark like a “RUFF!,” just a little yelpy sort of howl like “woo, woo-woo-woo.” That’s about how their fridge (probably the compressor) sounded.
So much like a dog that every time the fridge started “woo-woo-wooing,” their pet dachsund would perk up and start growling.
Mine did that last summer. We have a refrigerator and freezer downstairs, so we moved all our stuff to the basement, but I still had to toss a whole gallon of ice cream.
We got a Kenmore Elite from Sears as a replacement. It’s OK, the freezer bin rollers are a little annoying - they fall off the guides and I’m always having to put them back on. And almost 6 months to the day after we bought it, the “water filter needs replacing” light came on. It costs $35 for a new water filter.
I was a little annoyed with the rebate process too (it came with a bunch of rebates, as does almost anything purchased new these days), we missed out on a $55 rebate from the electric company because we bought the unit in MN and we live in WI. They wouldn’t honor it and I was a little miffed because the saleslady should have mentioned that. It’s not like they never get people from WI shopping at their store.
Well, we bought a Frigidaire. It was a little more expensive than the Summit, but who the hell has heard of Summit?
The main concern (besides price) was the size. Anyone who’s seen our kitchen knows that we don’t have much room. And the space for the refrigerator is extremely limited. So we were measuring the models we saw.
My wife is cleaning out the old one in anticipation of the delivery in an hour or so. Fortunately, most of the meat that was in the freezer is still cold – only partially thawed. She’s going to whip up the chicken wings (the whole whonking bag!) for dinner tonight (I mean, we can refrigerate what we don’t eat, right?) and she’ll cook up the ham steak tomorrow morning. Probably not much will have to be tossed out. The veggies and things like frozen waffles aren’t a health hazard if they thaw and re-freeze.
And RTFirefly, you’ll like my wife when you meet her at RibFest – she made the same observation about losing the other appliances!
We have a GE that has been running faithfully for 42 years and still going strong! We have to defrost the freezer every 2 months or so but other than that a great piece of machinery. GE all the way.
Well, the icebox has been delivered and installed.
We lost some food, most heartbreaking being the chicken wings (my wife just didn’t trust them after they’d assumed room temperature) and a whole gallon of milk, still unopened.
It doesn’t fit in the space quite the same way as the old one, but we’ll adjust.
I feel your pain, bro. The fridge came with our house, too. We moved in on a Saturday. On Sunday morn, bright and early, Mr. Hawk opened the door for his morning libation of orange juice, and the door came off in his hand. Dead fridge is very much no fun. Though contrary to RT’s assumption, there is a Plan B for you. It’s spelled M-O-M. But that’s a pretty desperate call that I’m glad you didn’t have to invoke.
Talk to the evil cooler of death and see if he is available for a short gig. He will probably keep your stuff cold and may or may not kill everyone on the planet. Hey, it’s a tossup.
