New Refrigerator reliability?

Factual Questions
1

Looking for input on compressor reliability from anyone in the appliance business.

2

I’m not in the business, but I recently had a french door JennAir compressor fail at 4+ years. It was still under warranty and the repair guy told me the following (not idea of his accuracy)

  1. Only two types of compressors are in general US usage. He replaced with the ‘other’ type and said that it is costing Maytag a bunch.

  2. Long warranty periods are going away (implied that the current units are only 1 year) because no one cares about warranty or reliabiliy, just price. (I guess service contracts are also preferred by the sellers as well)

3

Huh. So refrigerators are being phased out of the durable goods category?

4

Interesting. If I can figure out which brand has which compressor then I can narrow stuff down quickly.

5

The first fridge I ever bought lasted from 1966 till around 1990. It didn’t stop working, but the drain pipe to take the melted frost away broke, could not be replaced and I had to put a container under it to catch the water. Eventually, I tired of that and replaced it. The new fridge had a plastic that supported the vegetable crisper that broke off in a year or so. I replaced that (a nuisance), but then finally could not live with the noise it made. While the compressor was running, something was vibrating in the freezer and my best efforts could not cure this. After five years I finally got rid of it. My current fridge is maybe ten or twelve years old and runs fine. Still, it has plastic parts that worry me.

My impression is that it is not the compressor that breaks, but the general cheap materials used in the rest of the machine that go.

Incidentally, the delivery man (who was contracted to take the old fridge away) delivered the new and carted off the 1966 model commented that they are much lighter these days.

6

FWIW, the replacement compressor appears to be from Embraco. I have no idea who made the first one (but remember, this was 5 years ago and may have been just a single bad design for that company).

7

The original compressor may have been a Tecumseh, the spec sheet on the replacement had a Whirlpool number that x-refed to Embraco according to a google search.

Try this for an interesting read on this topic.

8

That was a depressing read.