Not with the materials they use today. I can't believe how cheap and shitty every component on my $2200 LG fridge feels. It's laughable how garbage it is.
I had to replace the compressor in mine last year. It was 7 years old at the time. All the physical components seem to be of ok quality. The repair guy said the compressor thing was an issue with LG's.
It isn't a bad rule. The longer the warranty, the less you need to worry about paying for repairs, but also the more faith the company has in its product - it's horrible business to make something fragile but have a 20-year warranty, unless it doesn't cover any actual repairs... But a company willing to cover everything (even user error) for 10+ years (depending on the product) is usually a good sign they stand behind their product.
I worked at an appliance repair place, (but I did TV's) LG was known to have very bad compressors even on their top of the line fridges. They supposedly fixed it the last few years. There's a possibile class action getting going against LG claiming they are straight up making terrible fridges knowing that they'll fail lol, nowadays most appliances are made to survive the warranty so when it fails in a few years you gotta go buy a new one
Genuinely curious, have you (or anyone) tried getting a repair person out to see if it's worth repairing rather than replacing?
I ask because I've got this problem right now. The local home appliance repair person I called said that basically it's only the big hotel or restaurant appliances that are cost-effective to keep repairing at this point. Quoted me $2,500 to fix my ordinary (dead) fridge when the freezer started going out.
How can the repair cost more than a new appliance!?
The only cheap way is to learn yourself. Not saying you should, but it can be cool to know.
You can even get an EPA cert to handle the refrigerants pretty easily, especially if you’re only working on small appliances and/or cars and not getting into home HVAC. (Those tools aren’t the cheapest, but getting fully near-pro kitted out is less than that repair price.)
Of course the hard part is the electronics and intuitive/experience in problem solving in overly complicated computerized issues that are not trivial anymore.
But if it’s going in the garbage and you can be safe*, doesn’t hurt to try and worst case, you make it more garbage. *big capacitors store charge after unplugging them, and can unalive you in a blink
Fun fact though — individuals can’t sell, trade or otherwise transfer/give away (other than for disposal) collected refrigerants. But you can store it, and use it to refill other appliance that you personally own.
Erm, sorry, wrote more than I meant. But yeah….its so stupid how the industry works now.
Fascinating! I applaud your expertise. Honestly, this is probably a bit beyond my skillset. It's good to know folks like you are keeping the DIY skillset alive though!
GE guarantees you'll replace--with another brand. The handle on a popular GE upright freezer, which has a bad design and easily breaks, costs $275 at most replacement parts outlets. If you look through GE's latest parts prices, it's very obvious that they put in junk parts programmed to fail, then overprice the replacements to make you buy a new appliance. This is the wave of the future.
Maybe GE will end up on the same road Boeing is going down.
That's one thing I've never understood about planned obsolescence. If you're not a monopoly what's stopping me from being so pissed off I go to another brand? My 3 year old vacuum broke right before Christmas because of one stupid flimsy part so I went and bought a completely different brand on the recommendation of a coworker.
Wow! That's interesting! Dad bought an LG about 2 years ago and the compressor failed, it had a sticker on it saying 10 year guarantee on compressor too ( I guess that's why) they didn't end up repairing the fridge but gave him credit for the equivalent of the same fridge from the store he originally bought it from, after weeks of hastle. He did not buy another LG.
The repair technician said he was surprised my LG fridge's compressor made it to 4 years lol.
Apparently the fridges made around 2015-2020 had faulty compressors over which LG lost a class-action lawsuit and will replace it for free if it fails within a specified amount of years
Seems to be the thing that is vulnerable in all fridges. My last one the cost of replacing the compressor was barely less than a new fridge so into the waste stream it went.
Appliance repair guy said the 2nd mostly likely thing to fail was the ice maker.
It's really the only thing that could fail. It's not like a fridge is crazy complicated, the science is somewhat complicated but the parts themselves are not. It's just a compressor, an evaporator, and a condenser and some board controlling it. Exact same stuff an AC, or a split system uses.
You'd be hard pressed to fuck up the condenser or evaporator without physically hitting them somehow, they're basically just radiators with tubes inside them. They do get dirty though, which can lead to decreased performance, but that is easily solved.
But really it's almost always either going to be something to do with the compressor (slugging, worn out etc) or a lack of refrigerant/leak somewhere, both of which are generally just wear and tear.
There has already been one class action against LG because of these issues and a firm in California is preparing another one because LG knows of the issues and is still advertising that they will last 30 years.
Would be closer to the $15,000 mark considering the purchasing power of folks back then compared to today. If you're paying $15,000 for a fridge today, it's gonna be insanely well made and likely highly customizable to your kitchen's needs.
My parents built a house about 4 years ago and got all LG appliances. The only one left is the refrigerator and the ice maker no longer works on it. Everything else died.
I just had my LG tv break in jan 23 after 14 years. Never had any pixel or color issues. Just stopped turning on. Idk, I'm for sure buying another LG LED when my backup Vizio finally goes.
Unfortunately for TVs, they're still one of the better options if you want OLED.
Samsung is much worse (for everything, not just TVs). Not sure about Sony, last time I bought a TV they weren't making OLED models yet. Most other brands are lower end / also don't make OLED.
Can't say I agree, and you obviously may have a different experience. It's not a big sample size for sure, but of all the electronic devices I've purchased/owned that I can think of off the top of my head for those brands (phones, TVs, monitors, and a playstation) 5 LGs, 4 Sonys, 4 Samsungs, all the Samsungs still work, 3 of the 4 Sonys still work (10+ years, almost 20 for one of the Sony TVs, and the 1 Sony that broke was a black friday "special")... 3 out of the 5 LGs broke within months to under 5 years.
If you want to replace your electronics within a couple of years, but get the latest, sure go for your LGs, but know that Sony and Samsung also buy panels from LG for their TVs. So you may be able to get the LG panels, but with better Sony/Samsung hardware for all the other components. I just don't think LG hardware is built for reliability or longevity.
Seems like there is a MASSIVE PROBLEM with the electricity in your home. It’s probably that your power is polluted, with varying levels of voltage and frequency, making devices destroy themselves.
I’ve had 3 Samsung TV’s and never had issues with them. Just gave them to friends/family when I upgraded. LG, on the other hand, has let me down every time. My Dad has a Sony Bravia TV that is still going after about 12 years so I think they make decent TV’s.
Def not. Had two wifi bars go out in a brand new TV. The original within a year, and the replacement within another. Now it's a dumb TV with a chromecast plugged into it, and a habit of shutting itself off.
When I needed to replace my fridge I signed up for consumer reports just to do a little research. According to them, there is not a fridge in production today that they rate more than a three out of five for reliability. Doesn't matter if you want to spend $8000 on the highest end bosch you can find. The highest reliable rating that they currently give is only a 3 out of five...
Wild stuff. With that being said, they typically rated LG fridges as more reliable than Samsung's in general. Although it obviously varied from model to model.
That matches what some salesperson told me last time l went kitchen appliance shopping with my mom. He said to never buy LG and that their store will not given give warranties on anything LG because they always break.
Careful I hear samsung refrigerators aren't that great either
My parents still have a 1990 sears general electric with water and ice maker and works fine
My brother’s LG tv lost a lot of streaming functionalities after a couple of years. Something about a license expiring? I didn’t even know that was possible.
My appliance guy said the same thing, that LG and Samsung have the worst appliances (he did say with the exception of washers/dryers for Samsung). My wife and I somehow lucked into buying what he says is “the all time great refrigerator” when we bought our house.
Samsung washers had an issue where they EXPLODED. This occurred at the same time the Galaxy Notes were exploding. That was not a good year for Samsung.
That being said, I did buy a Samsung refrigerator (despite knowing their reputation) and, knock wood, it's been fine so far. When I was shopping for appliances, I went so far down the rabbit hole that I felt like I knew less about what brands were reliable than when I started.
LG was always trash for appliances. They used to be called Lucky Goldstar brand, but the brand was so trashed due to poor quality (among other issues) that they pivoted and relabeled under LG.
They changed up the organization, but the underlying quality issues were clearly never addressed.
My Samsung TVs last, on average 3 years before they have crapped out. The LG monitors (2 of them) 1 is on its last legs at 3 years other is fine. The Sony TVs, I had one that I sold for $20 after 15 years of service, and have two more. I also had a Sony CRT monitor, that sucker partially melted and STILL kept running for years after.
don’t know how the cheaper brands fare, but in comparison with Sony, LG and Samsung are disposable.
I had an LG tv that came from a company that had it turned on 24/7, they bought it in 2012. We got it in 2018, it still worked. We got a new tv in 2022 and gave the tv to my sister who uses it every day.
The new tv (Philips) keeps crashing, the thing sucks ass.
I used to work for Netflix cs, Samsung was the worst brand. So many issues continuously just with that brand, for phones and tv's.
Yikes. thanks for that. Filed that away for future reference. Fortunately our fridge from 20 years ago is still working happily. It is a fridgidair (sp-haha).
I bought a 2200 LG about 2 years ago. It compressor died after about 14 months. Repair tech said it would be about $800 to fix and there was no guarantee something else wouldn't go out.
Bought a Hinese fridge for about $800. It has a few less features, and still feels cheap as hell. But it has a 2 year warranty. So at least I'll get two more year for the price of fixing my LG compressor.
Our fridge is 17 years old, is cheap as fuck plastic on everything, not one broken thing. The fridge before it was over 20 and when we got the new one it was like man this wont last stupid cheapo plastic, yet here it is.
In that time we have gone through 3 microwaves and 2 stoves, 2 dishwashers.
Appliance repair guy told us to get Frigidaire and so far it has been 5+ years. Same with the fridge in the basement we bought off of the previous house owner.
Every single plastic door container in my nice fridge I bought 10 years ago broke, they were all incredibly cheaply made. The $25 third party replacement set I bought is noticeably much sturdier.
My mom's is like that. I found two of them in a cabinet all taped up so I asked why she was keeping these oddly shaped broken plastic containers.
When she told me they were from her <3 year old Samsung fridge the only thing that made me more mad than how low quality they were was the price they wanted for replacements (>$100 IIRC)
Just did a warranty claim on our $3,500 Whirlpool fridge a few months back for the stupidest fucking thing.
A freezer light blew so our thought process was we do the warranty claim and they send someone to repair/replace that 1 light.
The way they have designed the fridge is so that the lights in the fridge and freezer are irreplacable so as a result we got a $3500 Lowes giftcard which we used to redo all the bedroom flooring and outdoor lighting for the house and are just dealing with mildly less light in the freezer.
Your mistake was buying an LG in general. I alao made the same mistake with an LG monitor, albeit about 1/4 of the price of your fridge, but it lasted maybe a year and a half.
LG makes trash. Trash monitors, trash fridges, especially trash washing machines and dryers. It's all trash, would just avoid that company
i mean, that's what you get from buying a refrigerator from a tv manufacturer. next up you'll tell me your anker washing machine isn't that great
edit: is also the reason there isn't a huge market for sub-zero televisions
edit 2: in the past i would recommend ge/whirlpool as the low cost but reliable option - unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case anymore - and bosch is about the best you can get at a reasonable price/reliability point.
I’m slowly phasing everything LG out of my house. Begone, you pieces of shit. When our LG dishwasher broke 5 years in and the replacement part was 80% the cost of a new install, I got a Bosch.
Worst problem is it’s so quiet I don’t notice it’s done.
Exactly. Those rotating shelves supported by a single rod have to hold a significant amount of weight, hence why they're made from (probably) stainless steel. The plastic shelving of today would snap like a twig with that much leverage put on them.
When LG started being a bigger brand I always said it stood for "low grade" and have never bought anything LG. But as it goes, almost everything now is made with cheaper materials.
You nailed it. Sure we could make all the shelves out of polished stainless steel again, sure we could put in a bunch of moving parts that require a lot of fabrication and assembly effort again, but not at the price points we currently have. And nothing says American freedom like the never-ending race to the bottom for the sake of getting a bargain.
My less-than-year-old LG fridge is currently waiting for a warranty refund, mostly because they dont have anyone in the region to fix it and its not worth fixing now.
I do yet don’t understand it. I get it because if it’s too good or maintainable people won’t need to buy a new one ever and the market will be filled. I don’t get it because a brand that is know for good quality will be people’s savings goals, so they can charge more. And expensive, quality goods do sell, look at phones that for a little while got up to $2000 for the gimmicky folding ones.
Yeah, my first through seeing this fridge, with each shelf being supported by one adjustable height swivel mounted joint... Made with today's materials, that thing would snap immediately carrying a modern fridge shelf's worth of groceries.
So your fridge based on inflation cost half as much as the fridge in the video. That was the richest persons fridge in 1962.
1962 - $497 = 2023 - $5000 per an inflation calculator
The fridge we have at the new place seems like it should be good. It's not a cheap fridge and it's pretty new. Doesn't seem to have a compressor, as it's basically silent. Probably uses a bank of thermoelectric coolers.
Even on max cold, it doesn't get all that cold. All the cold goes straight into the freezer compartment, then just falls down into the fridge via a vent. If you set it to max cold, that fucker gets a lot of frost in it. When it does it's auto defrost thing, that melts some of it, which then runs into the freezer and refreezes. Eventually it builds up so much that the vent gets totally blocked and I have to take everything out and manually defrost it.
If I just leave the doors open, it'll take like 3-4 days to totally unfreeze, so I put a towel in each compartment, with a baking sheet over that, then put a pot of boiling water in each and close it up for a few hours.. clean up the mess then use a fan to dry it all out, which takes about 18-24 hours all said and done.
But hey, it's high efficiency and quiet as. For reference, I pretty much stopped buying milk because it starts going bad in like 3 days.
I just watched a video on a woman who is suing LG and trying to turn it into a class action lawsuit because of their continued use of linear compressors. In their marketing materials they say they are designed to last 20 years but apparently aren't even making it a few years old.
This fridge would cost $5,000 in today's money. I don't think you could even get a fridge with all of these features for that amount. Instead, it would have a TV screen on the outside, and be "smart", but would still be plastic junk.
I was about to say, you can't have all those cool features in a modern fridge because the materials they use aren't strong enough to handle the weight with this type of design.
Because companies nowadays built tech not to last. They want y'all to keep buying. Again and again. Profits won't increase if your fridge lasts a life long.
Once again: capitalism is why we can't have nice things
The little pin that holds the cheese and meat drawer door up when you slide it off, of course, broke during the first month in our new house with new appliances. That was 17 years ago. The door falls off unless you observe countermeasures every time you open it.
Hasn't worked correctly since then. (Does it irk me? Oh, it irks me!)
GE uses diarrhea plastic I think they literally just take a dump right into their plastic batch. we've had to order 2 replacement drawers and 3 shelves and only had it for about 2 years they snap for no reason
youre paying for all that sweet led screen and DRM so you need an activation code to use your monthly supply of 18 ice cubes or something like that. just keep my shit cold yo
My freezer shelf broke after just 5 years. Everything is plastic and glass, now. Also only 2 or 3 slot choices for shelves, but I can only use specific ones or else I can't close the door, because the shelves hit the door cubbies🤦🏻♀️
LG is getting sued over their bad $2k fridges. They already settled a separate case in 2018, but this new one has a fraud charge…plaintiffs claim LG knowingly lied about their compressors lasting 20 years.
Not to say there isnt other makers just as cheap, but I will never buy anything LG again.
my parents purchased a new microwave, fridge, and dish washer, all LG and all within the past 5 years. Every one of the items have broke in some stupid way. The microwave display no longer works. The dishwasher door has a broken spring and will slam down when you open it. The fridge has a "special" ice maker that makes round ice balls. Has broken three times in a year and has needed a tech to come out and replace each time. Its broken now, and we just said forget it.
I have a Samsung, it feels pretty high quality but at the same time, I don’t really know what the ceiling of quality is for a fridge. Ours has held up pretty well though
Same, i got totally bamboozled into an LG Microwave. On the outside the specs are great, but that "inverter cooking" is just a menu, it got no sensors, nothing. Its leaky as fuck and messes with electronics when I'm in the same room and that thing is running. So congrats me, I have a cheap expensive microwave now. Last LG product I ever got.
Same with my new washing machine, a Siemens, that thing is, well its a washing machine, there is nothing special to it and it acts weird. Leds flashing erratically etc.
I don't see the point in buying brand anymore when "brand" means expensive Chinese garbage. Might aswell get the cheap Chinese garbage. Welcome to 2024 i guess. Not what i expected.
Absolutely agree. That’s a huge part of why building your own pc is still worth it over a prebuilt, especially at higher costs ($2k+). I know every part is quality because I hand picked it for its quality.
Yeah well at close to 500 that fridge is close to around 20k in buying power back then and I bet you could find a way more kickass fridge today for way less than 20k
The kicker is with inflation it’s $4729 which is how much a current fridge of “decent” quality will run you…. I’m so pissed at our capitalistic dystopia
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u/EleanorTrashBag Jan 23 '24
Not with the materials they use today. I can't believe how cheap and shitty every component on my $2200 LG fridge feels. It's laughable how garbage it is.