This is an update on my new (July 2015) Whirlpool '4 door' French door fridge. I previously reported that while on a 1 week vacation in April
2016, the unit powered down and spoiled all the food. The ice also melted and warped the laminate flooring in front of the unit. I explained to WP that there was some kind of a power glitch because the WP oven flashed the PF (power fail) icon, although it didn't fully loose the time as it was just off by about 5 minutes. The WP microwave totally lost the time and was blank. There was NO indication on the fridge itself. If there was, my friend that came into the house while we were away, probably would have noticed it. Pushing and holding the 2 buttons that turn on and off the cooling, eventually flashed the ?cooling is off? icon. Duh, it was already off, just not showing. But now it was showing. After doing it again, the panel briefly read ?cooling is on? and the compressor and fans all started. Everything was normal with the exception of the water dispenser. The fridge cooled down and worked normally. After calling WP they took the ?it worked as it should have? attitude. I asked WP if it was in the sales information that it was supposed to shut down and spoil all the contents? All they could repeat is that it ?worked as it should have?. The water dispenser was stuck in measure fill mode where it provides 16 ounces and then shuts off, nice if you put an 8oz glass under it. I couldn't get it back to the normal mode of providing water only while the paddle is being pushed. I did NOT try a full power down (unplugging). The WP tech said there's nothing wrong, however, he reset the controller board by unplugging it and then re-plugging it. After that, the water dispenser worked normal. The controller was obviously stuck in some bad states and required a ?reboot?.I was going to send an email to the WP CEO, however, on their website, it gave an email for the corporate problem solver. So I did that at 2AM and got a phone call from WP at 9AM ? pretty good, I thought. After I complained that a fridge should recover after a power outage and should run 24/7/365 WP offered me $150 (I facetiously call it hush money). Plus they wanted to send out a 'senior tech' to check it out. The senior tech turned out to be the same tech that came out the first time (WP's authorized repair company). I explained to him that Corporate had summoned him, not me. He called the WP tech line (only for technicians) and after talking to them, he said that I probably found something that WP didn't or couldn't find. We tried turning the circuit breaker off and on both fast and slow and couldn't reproduce the problem. WP seems to think that there is some kind of icon or light that tells of a power failure. Attention WHIRLPOOL ? THERE ISN'T!
Later I called the guy at Corporate and told him nothing was done by the 'senior tech'. He now jumped on the ?it worked at it should have? bandwagon. I told him their product was crap and it should be fixed. I told him there might actually be something wrong with the controller, so they should replace it. He said he can't tell the tech what to do. He eventually offered to buy back the unit for what I paid for it.
Yesterday, I went to the appliance store (not a big box store) and the guy there told me that he's seen this problem in several different brands, even some of the ultra high end $5K stuff. He also informed me that my French door fridge with an extra refrigerator drawer (so called
4 door refrigerator), was not actually made in the USA but started life in Korea. Apparently, Samsung owns the patent on the 4 door fridge, so WP buy them and puts their own badge on it. Nice, I wanted to buy US and WP secretly sold me something from Korea. To get around the patent thing, one company now builds a 5 door unit that basically breaks the fridge drawer into 2 drawers.After working in the industry with high end fault tolerant systems for some 25 years, I realize now that WP and the rest of the industry doesn't know the meaning of fault tolerance and recovery. Apparently, this industry is just now learning stuff about electronic micro controllers. Stuff that I and my former company learned many years ago. So taking the WP buyback wouldn't accomplish anything.
My first though was, when away from home for several days, I would build a unit to a timed power failure to the fridge each day for say, 5 minutes, thus allowing the controllers to reset. However, I discovered that if the unit was in the ?cooling is off? state, after the reset, it remembered that and came back in the ?cooling is off? state. So, I would actually have to design something to press buttons and interpret the results ? way to complicated. Bummer! I found data loggers on the market that will log periodic temperature readings to the cloud and then notify me via email or text when it falls outside my preset limits. They seem to fall within the $150 'hush money' amount. At this point I think that is the best option.
Sorry for being so verbose but I just thought people would like to know.