It's not. It's a 9-second fill, and if the tray doesn't fill in that
time the icemaker burns out. No, I'm not kidding -- that's what the
Whirlpool repairman told me when I called him, a few days before the
end of the warranty.


That sounds like nonsense to me!

Ice makers are quite simple in design. All they have is an electric water
valve, the tray, a rotating device to push the ice out, a timer, and a
switch to tell if the ice compartment is full.

The water valve is turned on via a timer. Just on/off. It would not matter
if water was in the valve or not.

As to the rotating portion which pushes out the cubes, this is just powered
by an electric motor. It would actually have less work to do if there was no
water/ice in the trays.

I see no reason whatsoever how anything could possibly "burn out" if there
was little water or no water????

I do see a reason for a repairman to tell you this. Especially if your
warranty was about to expire and you did not have an extended warranty. And
that repairman made a commission on all extended warranties which he sold.
And the repairman needed the extra money due to problems with his personal
finances. THAT would be a reason for it to "burn out"!

Basically it used to be service departments were their own separate
department and all they did was fix things. All the greed and money making
was concentrated in the sales departments (all consumer products, not
appliances per se.)

Then the greedy sales manager types decided they could make more money by
infiltrating the ranks of the service people. So they started putting repair
people on commission (the more you charge, the more you get). Or holding
contests where the service person who racked up the most charges in a month
would get a prize or bonus. Etc.

So the service departments became a source of additional revenue. And this
would be with large corporation service departments. The small mom and pop
businesses don't do this because they give old fashioned service, want to
keep their customers happy, realize if they rob their customers, it might
look good for this "quarter" on the profit statement, but there will be no
customers left next year.

BTW when they first started pulling this crap, the repair people were quite
disgusted. But these days with the "me" generation, I suppose the younger
service people would be eating it up?