On 2011-11-23, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

In article ,
Adam Funk writes:
Our Bosch fridge-freezer, just over 3 years old, has a failing
frost-free system that a local technician has deemed uneconomical to
repair; he also said that he has a non-frost-free fridge-freezer at
home, because the frost-free gubbins, while usually reliable, are so
outrageously expensive to fix if they go wrong. (A technician in a
shop admitted the same thing to me.) Does anyone want to comment on
this?

Bog standard non-frost-free are extremely reliable, barring a period
almost 30 years ago just after the banning of CFC-expanded foam
insulation, where some unsuitable alternatives were used instead
which became water-logged after about 10 years.

The frost free mechanism won't come close to this in terms of
reliability, so I would challenge his assertion about "usually
reliable", and say the frost free mechanism is usually the cause
of breakdown.

Well, I think what he actually said was something along these lines:
many of them don't break and then they're fine, but when they do,
they're not worth trying to repair (because of the cost of the spare
parts).