We just went through a couple of weeks, yes weeks, of refrigerator hell. Our 10 year old Maytag went greasy side up. Again. 9th time in 10 years. 7 of those were ice maker related and 2 were a cooling problem. Yep. Same problem. And it took 2 service calls to get it done right this time. The freezer was still freezing, barely, but the refrigerator side went south. The coils in the freezer iced up because a circuit board that controls the defrost cycle failed. This severely restricted the air flow from the freezer to the frig. That coupled with a failed thermostat and a damper drive motor and the thing got up to 70°. And it was full of brisket, ribs, sausage and other goodies I was going to do up on my new smoker.

The bad part was the timing of the service calls. It cratered on Thursday evening. I called Friday morning. No service available until Tuesday. A parts changer showed up and told me he would have to order the parts and that would take about 3 days. 30 minutes after he left he called and said the parts were local and he would return that afternoon. As he was leaving after replacing some parts, he said it could take up to 24 hours to cool. It didn’t take that long when it was new or after the last go round so I put it down to his companies CYA policy. Next morning it was all the way down to 55 so I called again. The nice lady agreed it wasn’t looking good so she set up another service call. For the following Tuesday. No frig for damn near 2 weeks. Well, when the time came, a real serviceman showed up. He found the frosted coils and the circuit board overlooked by the parts changer. And I called his supervisor and told him the fellow was a good one.

And who says extended warranties are a waste of money? We bought the thing at Circuit City and against my better judgement bought the extended warranty. After the first 4 or 5 service calls in the first term, we decided to renew. Then renew again. The first time the thing got hot, CC re-embersed us $150 for food loss. This time it was $175. Plus when I pitched a bitch about the long time involved on the second service call they coughed up $125 to buy a dorm size frig. So now we have an extra 4.4 cubic feet of space for goodies.

Oh, we bought a new Whirlpool. Baby Boy will take the Maytag. It has a year left on the extended warranty. The new one has gray sides, stainless doors and it’s a counter depth. Looks great with our new granite. We lost a couple cubic feet but with the new baby frig that’s okay because we gained nearly a foot of space between the refrigerator and the new king-size island we had put in last year. Another cutsie thing with this one is the water dispenser. You can rotate teh spigot so you can put a larger container under it easier. And you can have it measure the water in ounces, cups or liters. 2 ways. One way is to tell it how much you want and it will turn off at that amount. The other way is to just fill your glass or what ever and it measures as you go. Neat huh? Yeah, I know it’s more electronics but hey, that’s what extended warranties are for, no? Plus it’s a Whirlpool.