My less than a year old Whirlpool French door fridge locked up in the off state from an apparent power glitch. There was no indication on the control panel that it was off. Unfortunately we were away on a one week vacation. Of course, everything was lost. When we returned home, we found the unit at about 58 degrees in the fridge and about the same in the freezer. The ice in the ice maker had melted and seeped through the gaskets warping the laminate floor. I played the Microsoft game and attempted a reboot. First I pushed the buttons to turn off the unit and it responded with "cooling off" on the display. And then I pushed the buttons to turn it on. Amazingly, it started and ran. After a few hours it was up and running perfectly. BTW, the clock on the microwave (WP) had blanked and the the wall oven indicated PF for power failure, but it had the correct time ... minus one minute. So apparently it was a very short power on/off thing. When I called WP the person was very rude. They call their call center the "Customer Experience Center" and boy, was it an experience. She said the unit functioned properly and WP takes no responsibility in any of it. All she kept saying was that the unit works perfectly. BTW, I had a WP for the previous 6 years and only replaced it because we wanted the French doors instead of a side-by-side. It just fit better in the kitchen. Anyway, it never did anything like this in its 6 years and I assume even now it is probably still working for the person that bought it. This is just plain crazy. These things should have built in safeties for this kind of thing. I worked for 25 years in industry designing fault tolerant systems and something like this just could not be tolerated. Am I supposed to sit there and watch the unit 24/7/365, or hire someone when on vacation, to come in an check it? I did find a nice little product for just over $100 that would report the temperature inside the fridge to the company's cloud and when it went out of range, they would send off an email or text to me. Still not good if I am in Europe or something like that, but, it could send to a friend with a house key. BTW, WP is coming out later this week to check it out. There seems to be one other problem and this is the water dispenser operation. It seems to have shifted to a measured fill and I can't seem to make it go back to providing water only when the paddle is pushed as it was before. If the repair person tells me that they are all this way (the power down thing) I will demand that WP remove the box permanently. Sorry for being so verbose.
- posted
7 years ago