When did Maytag go bad? (2007)
Had a Samsung fridge of ~2016 vintage for about 4 years until it failed. Basically, the defrost cycle relies on a tiny aluminum &quot;finger&quot; that dips into the ~1&#x2F;2&quot; hole at the back of the fridge where the cooling coils are. The idea is that it stays warm enough to not freeze. It wasn&#x27;t good enough to actually do that.<p>The result was that the coils would constantly ice up and form into a solid block of ice. As this part was behind a lot of styrofoam and plastic that was GLUED INTO PLACE, in addition to having some of the most annoying mechanical design I&#x27;ve ever had the displeasure of disassembling for the shelves and drawers to even get to that part, disassembling it breaks it. The first sign of the ice is the fan making a grinding sound, as it&#x27;s literally grinding on the ice block.<p>I eventually rigged it up in a way that didn&#x27;t allow condensation to form enough to even ice up in the first place, by removing the entire inside back panel, plastic, styrofoam, and all, and putting 4x 120mm computer fans with a cheap external fan controller and a 12v wall wart plug to power it. My wife hated it, but it did work. We replaced it with a nice GE Profile that has been great.<p>Ooh, also: the ice maker would also ice over and constantly require manual defrosting, which the manual explicitly warns against -- their solution: remove everything from the fridge for 48-72 hours and leave it open for the ice to melt by itself. What a great idea if you have a second fridge and freezer to store everything while that works.<p>The parts were also very complex, hard to fit together, and very difficult to clean. It was mechanically over-engineered, but had awful reliability, repairability, and ease of maintenance -- spill something on the lower shelf? Prepare for 30 minutes of disassembling sticky plastic panels and yanking things just to clean up the spill that seeped under the poorly-designed panels that are inaccessible otherwise. Make sure to remember where all 8 different lengths of screws go.<p>There are class-action lawsuits about these fridges: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;topclassactions.com&#x2F;lawsuit-settlements&#x2F;consumer-products&#x2F;appliances&#x2F;hearing-set-after-more-than-a-year-of-mediation-in-samsung-refrigerator-class-action&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;topclassactions.com&#x2F;lawsuit-settlements&#x2F;consumer-pro...</a><p>Their dishwasher that we unfortunately own isn&#x27;t much better: the soap dispenser is blocked by anything remotely large in the lower front-left tray, causing the soap to not come out (as the door swings open and is easily blocked by anything in front of it). The drain &#x2F; valve part (a large one-piece molded plastic part that costs $150 ish) is on the side and attached with an eighth-turn plastic screw comes off at the slightest touch and causes a leak down the side which triggers the leak sensor, requiring pulling the entire thing out, drying off the bottom, and re-attaching that piece on the side. There was a part, I think it was a small plastic wheel to detect water flow, inside of that one-piece molded plastic plumbing &#x2F; tank &#x2F; whatever mixer on the side, that had a couple pieces of rust in it from our crappy 100 year old city water main. Because that part is entirely encased in heat-welded thick plastic, it&#x27;s impossible to remove to clean. Now that one is in a landfill and the new one was quite expensive. The error code is also non-specific, despite having a few dozen wires leading to all the different sensors that can and will eventually fail, so I first replaced the main water inlet sensor, which didn&#x27;t fix the problem. Lastly, the touch controls are on the top front of the unit, which means it must be opened slightly to control them, and of course they&#x27;re capacitive touch buttons with no raised edges, so you must look at them to touch the right one, and they don&#x27;t work with wet hands, which is just a fantastic idea for a dishwasher.<p>I think Samsung has some of the worst industrial designers in the industry, along with some of the worst product and software people (read up on the Bixby button on their phones some time). Their appliances and most of their other products are pure garbage destined for landfills, and I will never buy another as long as I live if I have any say in it. I have spent countless hours diagnosing and attempting to repair their hot garbage products, and I truly hope they go out of business very soon for making such horrible products that make the world a worse place in so many ways. They make shiny crap that looks good on a shelf or in Best Buy, then you get it home and maybe it works OK for a few months. I have no idea why they have fans out there.<p>Edit: The only Samsung stuff I own by choice is their B-die RAM and SSDs. Guessing that&#x27;s an entirely different division.