I've not bought a new fridge/freezer for years but need one in a hurry to put into a rental flat. Generally for this application I'd buy at the low end of the market where brands like LEC and Beko used to be plentiful.
Looking around online most places seem to be offering Fridgemaster at the sort of price point I want to be.
Anyone know who is behind this brand and or where they have sprung from?
Any opinions, good bad or average welcome.
TIA Bob
They share an address with HiSense, who are a Chinese brand that have similarly "come from nowhere" in the TV marketplace.
Hisense have been around for a while as a brand of cheap Android tablets.
They have not suddenly appeared, I've had a frost free one for over 7 years now with no issues other than the usual bunged up drain hole.
As for who, hard to say, I'm suspicious its just what I call a bitsa, ie bits of this and that from all over. grin. Brian
With the exception of a few brand names, brand name and manufacturer no longer have much of a relationship in white goods. There are way fewer manufacturers left than there are brand names, and you can find different models under the same brand are manufactured by different manufacturers. Many manufacturers are not household names at all, and sell nothing under their own branding.
A large source of fridge-freezers in Europe are the former eastern block countries who used to make them for the USSR, but now manufacture for many of the European brand names.
This isn't new - Hotpoint used to manufacture fridges/freezers and dishwashers for other brands, whilst buying in other white goods they didn't manufacture to sell as part of their own complete range. None of the manufacturers manufactured all of their own branded products to make up a full white goods range.
The difference nowadays is that Hotpoint (like most other brands) is only a brand name now which doesn't manufacture anything itself. These brand names get sold between companies over time. After Hotpoint ceased to exist as a manufacturer, the Hotpoint brand name was sold in Europe to Indesit (which is now just a brand name too), then Melony Brothers, and currently Whirlpool I beleve. In the US, it was sold to GE, but I don't know who has it there now.
Very true. When our 30 year old Hotpoint f/f died last summer I went to the local appliance shop to buy a new one, not necessarily Hotpoint, and also wanted to avoid a Beko model due to their 'fiery reputation'! I settled on a Blomberg and when it was delivered I discovered a sticker on it saying 'Manufactured by Beko'!
"Brian Gaff" snipped-for-privacy@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in news:q1k7li$90j$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
Most things we buy are BITSAs now. A company that makes cabinets - or plastic mouldings may not be the best at making (say) a Compressor. Quality is largely engineered in at the design stage.
Bought one about 15 years ago. Moved house. It has lived in the garage for the past 10 years and was rarely used. It still works, but is going rusty.
On 15/01/2019 13:52, Mr Pounder Esquire wrote: ound for a while as a brand of cheap Android
There is very little in a fridge/freezer to go wrong. Many are scrapped because plastic inner doors\liners go brittle and start cracking up.
Bollocks Thermostat, compressor and in the case of frost free s*it - just about everthing.
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