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?

One of the models we're looking at on-line is branded Sharp --- I
didn't even know they made that kind of appliance. Does anyone have
an opinion on them?

Also, it's a frost-free model but comes with a 5-year guarantee
included. Subject to what I wrote above, is frost-free worth the risk
with the guarantee?

Thanks,
Adam

Dunno about that I had a Hitachi from 1985 till about three years ago and it
worked fine till the thermostat and compressor went on the blink. I how have
a Fridgemeaster with no issues, which is frost free, and to be honest at the
price of it, I'll just junk it when it busts.
Question, if they can be made cheap, how come its costly to fix them? I
smell a bit of profiteering.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Adam Funk" wrote in message
...
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?

One of the models we're looking at on-line is branded Sharp --- I
didn't even know they made that kind of appliance. Does anyone have
an opinion on them?

Also, it's a frost-free model but comes with a 5-year guarantee
included. Subject to what I wrote above, is frost-free worth the risk
with the guarantee?

Thanks,
Adam

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.

One of the models we're looking at on-line is branded Sharp --- I
didn't even know they made that kind of appliance. Does anyone have
an opinion on them?

Also, it's a frost-free model but comes with a 5-year guarantee
included. Subject to what I wrote above, is frost-free worth the risk
with the guarantee?

I don't know anything about Sharp, but generically, I would calculate
the value of it to you based on write-off after 6 or 7 years, whereas
I would expect at least twice that (and probably more) from a
non-frost-free. I had a non-frost-free Hotpoint fail after 25 years.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Dunno about that I had a Hitachi from 1985 till about three years ago and
it worked fine till the thermostat and compressor went on the blink. I how
have a Fridgemeaster with no issues, which is frost free, and to be honest
at the price of it, I'll just junk it when it busts.
Question, if they can be made cheap, how come its costly to fix them? I
smell a bit of profiteering.

Brian

Made in Poland or some other ********.


--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Adam Funk" wrote in message
...
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?

One of the models we're looking at on-line is branded Sharp --- I
didn't even know they made that kind of appliance. Does anyone have
an opinion on them?

Also, it's a frost-free model but comes with a 5-year guarantee
included. Subject to what I wrote above, is frost-free worth the risk
with the guarantee?

Thanks,
Adam

At the risk of tempting fate, our Bosch frost-free fridge freezer
bought in 1994 is still tootling along, and I've never missed the
hassle of defrosting the freezer.

The only problem we've had with it is that two of the plastic handles
on the freezer drawers snapped a few years ago. I haven't replaced
them because the quoted cost of two piddling bits of plastic was
outrageous.

On Nov 22, 1:54*pm, Adam Funk wrote:

i had two frost-free freezers. The first a Bosch died suddenly, I
couldn't find anyone to fix it and I didn't have time to try. So I
bought a "very reliable", very expensive Liebherr frost free. Which
expired suddenly a couple of months ago. i couldn't get anyone to fix
it. I got a £120 fixed price repair from Domestic and General, big
mistake. Domestic and General are purveyors of extended warranties,
they sub-contract the work out and have no customer service or quality
control. The bloke they sent levered bits off the back trying to get
to the PCB; access is through the front. He hadn't got a clue.
Domestic and General won't pay for the damage.

With nothing to lose, I had a go and found it was a thermistor.

I won't buy another frost free job. A conventional freezer uses a
passive device to cool the compartment, the equivalent of a radiator.

A frost free has a fan, a finned heat exchanger, the equivalent of a
fan-coil air blower, plus various electronic sensors and controls that
the refrigeration gorillas don't understand. If you've had any
dealings with fan-coils, you'll know they're a set of maintenance
problems in a cabinet.

Onetap wrote:

Domestic and General won't pay for the damage.

I'd suggest you ring Consumer Direct and get some advice on how to persuade
D&G to pay.


--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to replacing "aaa" by "284".

On Nov 24, 1:09*am, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
wrote:
Onetap wrote:
Domestic and General won't pay for the damage.

I'd suggest you ring Consumer Direct and get some advice on how to persuade
D&G to pay.

Thanks, but I already know.

"Onetap" wrote in message
...
On Nov 22, 1:54 pm, Adam Funk wrote:

i had two frost-free freezers. The first a Bosch died suddenly, I
couldn't find anyone to fix it and I didn't have time to try. So I
bought a "very reliable", very expensive Liebherr frost free. Which
expired suddenly a couple of months ago. i couldn't get anyone to fix
it. I got a £120 fixed price repair from Domestic and General, big
mistake. Domestic and General are purveyors of extended warranties,
they sub-contract the work out and have no customer service or quality
control. The bloke they sent levered bits off the back trying to get
to the PCB; access is through the front. He hadn't got a clue.
Domestic and General won't pay for the damage.

These guys are "trained" to repair all domestic appliances.
Refrigeration is quite specialised. Domestic refrigeration is a bitch.

With nothing to lose, I had a go and found it was a thermistor.

I won't buy another frost free job. A conventional freezer uses a
passive device to cool the compartment, the equivalent of a radiator.

A frost free has a fan, a finned heat exchanger, the equivalent of a
fan-coil air blower, plus various electronic sensors and controls that
the refrigeration gorillas don't understand. If you've had any
dealings with fan-coils, you'll know they're a set of maintenance
problems in a cabinet.

On 2011-11-22, NT wrote:

Frost frees are inherently unreliable. If you want something to last 5
yrs you may be ok, but if you expect a fridge freezer to be likely to
last 20 years, avoid frost frees. I'd rather defrost a few times when
I choose than have a freezer die unplanned.

With non frost frees, reliability is generally good across brands. The
value types you can get for £99 have short design life, but how long
they last IRL I dont know.

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Fridge

Thanks (to you & the others who replied) for the advice. The problem
is that all the fridge-freezers near the capacity of our current one
seem to be frost-free, but we've found a non-frost-free Siemens model
that's close.

On 2011-11-22, Mr Pounder wrote:

DO NOT buy a frost free. They have timers/ PCBs, defrost heaters and
horrible things in them.
You will not get 20 years from a fridge, those days have long gone
I did not know that Sharp made refrigeration - who owns Sharp these days?

No idea --- but that was the first Sharp fridge I've seen too.

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).

In article ,
Adam Funk writes:
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).

The parts that fail are usually quite cheap (e.g. a thermister).
Trouble is that diagnosis and repair is well beyond the
capabilities of most repair technicians, so you'll either
spend a fortune on their time and parts they wrongly replace
by trial and error because they don't know what they're doing,
or they'll just tell you it's beyond repairing, because they
know they can't diagnose the problem.

So he's almost right - they're not worth trying to repair,
but it's because the diagnosis is beyond the capabilities of
the repair technician, not because the parts are expensive.
The end result is the same, however.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Nov 26, 7:23*pm, Adam Funk wrote:
On 2011-11-22, NT wrote:
Frost frees are inherently unreliable. If you want something to last 5
yrs you may be ok, but if you expect a fridge freezer to be likely to
last 20 years, avoid frost frees. I'd rather defrost a few times when
I choose than have a freezer die unplanned.

With non frost frees, reliability is generally good across brands. The
value types you can get for £99 have short design life, but how long
they last IRL I dont know.

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Fridge

Thanks (to you & the others who replied) for the advice. *The problem
is that all the fridge-freezers near the capacity of our current one
seem to be frost-free, but we've found a non-frost-free Siemens model
that's close.

thats curious, as frost frees give less volume per outer dimensions,
since they have a closed compartment at the back for the works.


NT

On Nov 26, 11:14*pm, (Andrew Gabriel)
wrote:
In article ,
* * * * Adam Funk writes:



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).

The parts that fail are usually quite cheap (e.g. a thermister).
Trouble is that diagnosis and repair is well beyond the
capabilities of most repair technicians, so you'll either
spend a fortune on their time and parts they wrongly replace
by trial and error because they don't know what they're doing,
or they'll just tell you it's beyond repairing, because they
know they can't diagnose the problem.

So he's almost right - they're not worth trying to repair,
but it's because the diagnosis is beyond the capabilities of
the repair technician, not because the parts are expensive.
The end result is the same, however.

Thermistors at £25 a pop, door seals at £100 a go, etc. It makes doing
much pointless.


NT

On 2011-11-27, NT wrote:

On Nov 26, 7:23Â*pm, Adam Funk wrote:
On 2011-11-22, NT wrote:
Frost frees are inherently unreliable. If you want something to last 5
yrs you may be ok, but if you expect a fridge freezer to be likely to
last 20 years, avoid frost frees. I'd rather defrost a few times when
I choose than have a freezer die unplanned.

With non frost frees, reliability is generally good across brands. The
value types you can get for £99 have short design life, but how long
they last IRL I dont know.

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Fridge

Thanks (to you & the others who replied) for the advice. Â*The problem
is that all the fridge-freezers near the capacity of our current one
seem to be frost-free, but we've found a non-frost-free Siemens model
that's close.

thats curious, as frost frees give less volume per outer dimensions,
since they have a closed compartment at the back for the works.

Yes, it is strange! I suspect it may be that they consider
"frost-free" a selling point that they need to put in the higher price
ranges that include most of the large-capacity fridge-freezers.

On 2011-11-26, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Adam Funk writes:

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).

The parts that fail are usually quite cheap (e.g. a thermister).
Trouble is that diagnosis and repair is well beyond the
capabilities of most repair technicians, so you'll either
spend a fortune on their time and parts they wrongly replace
by trial and error because they don't know what they're doing,
or they'll just tell you it's beyond repairing, because they
know they can't diagnose the problem.

So he's almost right - they're not worth trying to repair,
but it's because the diagnosis is beyond the capabilities of
the repair technician, not because the parts are expensive.
The end result is the same, however.

We ended up getting a Siemens non-frost-free fridge-freezer (for just
over £400).

The paperwork that came with it included the manufacturer's 2-year
guarantee and a form for purchasing a further 3 years. The generic
form lists prices for various types of appliances, including £74 for a
non-frost-free fridge-freezer and £119 for a frost-free fridge-freezer
--- this suggests that Siemens' own "appliance actuaries" expect
frost-free models to cost 60% more (on average) to repair in years 3
to 5 than non-frost-free ones.