I'm trying to help my parents resolve some weird issues with their
Whirlpool electric self-cleaning oven, model #GBD277PDQ1. Twice now,
they report that while trying to cook something the oven has gotten
itself into self-cleaning mode and they couldn't find any way to turn
it off. Furthermore, the electronic door lock prevented them from
opening the door. The first time this happened (about 1 1/2 yrs ago),
things got so bad that the oven overheated itself and severely burned
all the food inside before they turned it off at the breaker. They
wound up with a $600+ repair bill to replace the Control Assembly,
Thermo Control, and Thermostat. It's unclear which if any of these
parts were secondary failures due to the overheating and smoke.

The second time around, which I witnessed this evening, the oven again
got stuck on self clean. We tried repeatedly to stop it with the OFF
button. The control display indicated 'Cool' and kept the door locked.
This makes sense - that it wouldn't let you open the door until the
oven cooled down to a safe temperature - except that we're pretty sure
that the heating elements continued to stay on (we saw the glow).
Before creating another charred food fiasco, we switched off the
breaker. After some time without power, the oven eventually cooled and
unlocked the door. Now, the control unit seems to come up in a 'clean'
state, with only the time showing and no indication of a clean cycle or
oven on in any capacity, BUT the top heating elements immediately come
on and don't seem to respond to anything from the control panel. We
can't get the darn things to turn off. So we've disabled the oven at
the breaker box and can't use it until we figure this out.

Needless to say, my parents are loathe to go through another $600
repair and are very frustrated. We need to either get Whirlpool to
address this issue on their dime, figure out how to repair it ourselves
for a more reasonable cost, or shop for a new oven entirely.

Any advice would be most appreciated!

Dan