My wife and I are in exactly the same situation, enipla. The ice maker section of our refrigerator works just fine. It makes ice fast and we can easily just grab some in our hand (once we removed the shield from the front). I suspect that the only thing wrong with the dispenser is the switch on the lever you push with your glass, but the repair guy says he’ll only replace the whole assembly. I can’t find the assembly myself and the switch is an oddball mechanical thing that probably has no substitute available. For $800+, I can grab my own ice until the whole appliance drops dead.
Yeah, not quite the same thing @ZonexandScout . It doesn’t make ice at all. Its hooked up, no leaks. No ice in the ‘bin’. Auger works, but it doesn’t make any ice at all.
The refer came with the house. It’s nice otherwise, we like it. My wife is really the only one that uses ice, and uses ice trays. She said don’t worry about it 
Still bugs me though.
So sorry. I’m usually pretty good at appliance repairs (e.g., replacing a control for a stove burner, putting a new belt on the dryer drum, etc.), but this one has me stumped.
Yeah, I’m a do-it-your-selfer too (designed and built a two story addition to my house). The appliance guy said that this is common with this Samsung refer. He went online and showed me the cost of the parts. I’ve been looking around for any class action suits.
I said no, I could put that $820 towards a new refer. And he agreed, and charged me $180 
My family goes through a lot of ice, from filling drinking glasses to filling sports bottles. We specifically got a fridge without a door dispenser. Because 1) a door dispenser lets a lot of heat and moisture into the freezer (this is even more important in a hot or humid climate), 2) a door dispenser takes space that can be used for other things, 3) the internal ice maker works better without a chute mechanism, and 4) the internal bucket holding ice is easy to access and easy to remove (just open the door and scoop out what you need, no waiting for a jammable gear to move ice).
The unit I mentioned above is a Frigidaire Gallery series side-by-side unit with through-the-door ice and water dispenser that we bought about five years ago. We use a lot of ice, and based on my previous experience, I wanted a fridge that had more ice storage and an ice maker that would be more easily replaced if it failed.
Knock wood, it’s been working great for us, no bad smells, no breakdowns. The only problem we’ve had was that the front control panel crapped out after about two years, after the warranty period. But that had nothing to do with the ice maker.
Here is what it looks like. The bottom part is the large slide-out ice tray, the top is the ice maker. I don’t know how hard it would be to replace the ice maker. It takes up some space, but there’s still plenty of room in the freezer. (Click to see the whole image.)
How much room in the door is taken up by the ice chute? That’s where an external dispenser takes more space than an internal ice maker.
If that $820 is for the entire unit, you might see if you can find the actual broken component and replace that. Could be something as simple as a bad relay or switch or a broken wire somewhere.
When I got a convection oven, the first time I went to use the convection part, it didn’t work and it was already a bit out of warranty. For no reason at all, about 10+ years later I decided I wanted to fix it. After getting the wiring diagram from GE and poking around a bit, I found that the door switch was bad. The light worked when the door was opened, but the fan wouldn’t turn on when the door was closed. I replaced the switch and it works fine now.
Do you mean on the inside of the door? There is one shelf above the chute and two or three below. With that and the main inside space, it seems to be plenty.
Thanks @Joey_P . But the guy that specializes in this stuff couldn’t figure it out. I’ve got continuity testers and stuff, but I’m just not gonna dive into it.
Samsung fridge ice makers are notoriously awful - I’m truly surprised there has not been a class action lawsuit.
We got ours about 7 years back from a Habitat ReStore - slight dent on the front, meant we paid 700 vs 2200 for the thing. It’s great - except the ice maker has been trouble from day one. Housemate shamed Samsung into coming out and doing a fix (well, Asurion or something) that got us a few more months. Husband tried another fix. I’ve forbidden him from wasting any more money on it.
So I bought a countertop ice maker:
Does what it says. Makes ice fairly quickly; does not keep the ice cold so we need to use it, or scoop into a bag and freeze it - which we knew about when we bought it.
HOWEVER, the damn thing is VERY hard to clean. Not the main water reservoir - you dump it out and rinse it out. But the “fingers” that do the actual freezing. If you leave the thing running constantly for a month or more, it gets NASTY - as in, mildew or something forms on them - but there’s no easy way to reach them. I’ll have the thing perched over the edge of the kitchen sink, using bent up bottle brushes, bent up straw cleaning brushes, and my fingers, to try to dislodge the gunk. It’s paid for so we’ll keep it but I would absolutely NOT buy one again.
I heard that from the repair guy. I don’t think I could get into a class action since it came with the house we bought. It’s maybe 5 years old.
My wife (she who uses the ice) said not to worry about it. She just uses ice trays. Sometimes buys a bag of ice.That was good news.
Oooh: had a recent hospital stay.
The remote for the TV was also the nurse call button - so far so good. Tons of buttons - the thing had a numeric keypad. I assume so I could select a channel by number?
What it did NOT have was any kind of BED controls as I’ve seen before.
The bed controls (to raise / lower the head, for example) were on the side rails. Basically above my shoulder level. I could reach them - just - by twisting in a way I was NOT supposed to.
Oh, and the bed was too short. My first night, I had no issue. My second night, for some reason my feet were jammed against the footboard, painfully so. Someone finally figured out that this was because there’s a “make it longer” button on the OUTSIDE of the bed, that simply tilts the footboard away. If I’d been lying flat on the bed it might have been okay anyway, but as I was supposed to be tilted up, and that’s a pretty common position when in a hospital bed, WTF???
This isn’t product design per se, but adjacent to it. I bought a 20" box fan over the weekend for $19 on sale. It came with a 8 page instruction manual, 4 pages each English & Spanish. The English version was 4 lines of instructions - plug in, turn the dial to high/medium/low. Half a page of cleaning instructions, mostly around not submerging it in water or using toxic cleaners. The rest of it was safety instructions, don’t use it in a pool or the shower, don’t stick anything in the blades.
It also came with a 2 page warranty, a warranty registration form (which they cannot require you to return, based on federal regulations), and an extended warranty replacement plan, which costs 1/2 the full price of the fan for 3 years of additional coverage.
The stupid design being all those pages of directions? It cost them less than a cent to print the whole thing. Why wouldn’t they?
That and trying to sell an extended warranty for a cheap box fan. I did say it was stupid design adjacent.
I started this thread saying that everyone complains about gas pumps, but today I experienced what might be the most bone-headed interface I’ve ever seen.
I went to fill up, and this is what the screen said:
But - I’m NOT an existing member, and I DON’T want to join! So, what button do I press?
After mashing all the (unmarked) buttons on the left and right of the screen, I realized you were supposed to use the keypad, mounted below the screen. But nothing I did would get past this screen. I even tried putting in a fake number, but that didn’t help. Finally, I decided to just insert my credit card and - Voilà! I was able to pump my gas. Would it have killed them to put another line on the display that said “or just insert your credit card”?
The only thing I put gas in regularly is my motorcycle, and every time the pump asks if I want to save $0.05/gallon by joining rewards. It’s a 2.5 gallon tank, so no, I have no interest in saving 15¢.
I think the lesson learned from DC fast charging requiring apps, creating an account, paying subscription fees, and all that is not for DC fast chargers to easily accept a credit card, but for gas pumps to start requiring apps and membership.
Never experienced it, nor even actually seen one, other than in a TV ad - a tall drinking cup that was called “Vessel”, that, IIRC, was sold with the gimmick that you could see digital readouts of how much liquid was remaining in the stylishly opague thingy.
The place I
OK, you win but I just had a close second.
The TLDR version:
Gas pump menu changes from easy to understand and intuitive to complex and hidden.
My regular gas station gives a significant discount for prepaid cash, enough so that I always use that.
For the three and a half years I’ve been using it, you insert your member’s card and it gives you various options, including one to charge your account. It’s right there on the front menu and easy to spot.
Yesterday, the menu had changed and that option was apparently gone. You could select pay with credit card, pay with the prepaid balance or pay with cash, but no option to charge your account.
Only after you selected to pay with the prepaid balance a tiny item offered the option to add money to your account.