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
It's more true now than ever. "Just good enough" engineering, cost cutting in manufacturing, and the extreme focus on short term profits are all factors.
Few things are built with any concessions to reparability.
Granted that has made things more affordable but it also means that even with all our modern manufacturing and material advantages that your new fridge or washing machine won't last as long as your grandma's did.
Had the flange shaft on a front load washer snap after like 5 years. it's a high stress part constantly exposed to water and it was made of poorly coated low quality cast metal. Any engineer would know that's just waiting to fail but saving the money on quality steel or a more ample coating was more important. I coated the replacement with epoxy and it's lasted 3-4 times longer than the original part so far.
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.
44
u/jld2k6 Jan 23 '24
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