New Refrigerator, Poor Service from Samsung, Finally fixed

If you are familiar with RVs, you already know they generally come with a special type of refrigerator that doesn’t use a compressor but a heat source to create cool out of an ammonia-hydrogen mixture.  The heat source can be electric or propane making them easy to run “off grid” without needing to run the generator.  More new coachs and high end trailers are coming with an actual residential style refrigerator.  They generally offer a lot more interior space in the same exterior space, cool quicker, and have more features.  The down side is that they only run on AC so you need a battery bank and inverter, or you have to run the generator, when not near an outlet.

So our RV had one of the old style AC/propane refrigerators which was pretty small, even for only two people.  About 11 cubic feet combined space.  It also had an ice maker which didn’t work very well, even when it worked but took up about 1/3 of the freezer side.  We found a lot of people have used a counter depth Samsung 18 cubic foot refrigerator very successfully to replace this style of refrigerator.  Measuring the space we had, we figured it would just fit in the hole where the old one was coming out.  One thing you should know about building RVs, they do the interior first on the chassis, and then put the walls up around that to enclose the whole thing.  That means that what is inside may not go out through a door because it didn’t have to come in that way.

We’ve used a local mobile RV service company now for some other work, and they agreed they would do the refrigerator install for us (for a not so bad fee).  They had to take the cooling unit off the back of the old fridge and the doors off the front.  They also removed the door stop on the front door to make it open wider. Then two strong young men (leaves me out on both counts) hoisted the shell over the passenger’s chair and out the door!  The good news was we didn’t have to remove a window and get a fork lift to take it out.

For the new fridge, they took the three doors off (French door model) and all of the interior shelves and dividers out.  The same two young strong men brought the main part of the new fridge in the same way.  It was actually lighter than the old unit’s frame.  Put it back together, slid it into place, plugged it in and it fired right up.  It’s a neat fridge with separate temperature controls on both sides, a variable speed compressor so it doesn’t really cycle on and off, just speeds up and slows down.  Plus a small ice maker that actually works as expected.  Fits right in and looks great.

Or, at least the ice maker made a bunch of ice.  We were moving the RV to go camping and so turned off the ice maker before we left.  It is a power miser so easily runs from the inverter when going down the road.  We didn’t use much ice so that stayed off for the trip.  The ice had gotten kind of lumpy and was sticking together, so we dumped the ice tray and turned the ice maker back on.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  No bueno.

Called Samsung and found out about the reset switch.  Did that a few times and would get about 3 piddly small ice cubes each time.  You can hear the water running briefly, but the trays don’t get full.  Conclusion by Samsung:  ice maker has failed and needs to be replaced, after several calls to customer service to get that conclusion.  Set up a repair with an authorized service center.  They gave me the ticket number and the name and phone number of the repair company and that they would call me.  A day later someone called to confirm that we had the water hooked up, and the refrigerator on, and the freezer was below freezing.  They were going to send the parts to the repair company.

No call ever came.  But two days later, I got a confusing call from a confused lady telling me that there wasn’t a repair company that could do the repair for two to four weeks.  I had trouble believing that for an area within the Austin Texas market, but that was the story.  I was offered a replacement fridge or a refund.  Remember I’d already spent several hundred dollars on the installation which they weren’t going to cover or refund.  She was supposed to connect me with a supervisor which put me on hold for several minutes, and then I got disconnected.

So a few days later, I tried their on line chat function to see if I could get this moving.  After repeating all, or most, of the above, I was told it was being escalted to their Executive Customer Review department for resolution and they would call me within two days.  Waiting slightly longer than two more days with no call back, I called the 800 number and asked to connected to the ECR department, which they did.  This lady was back to the same story that they couldn’t find an authorized repair center to make the repair.  Well, I had already called the company they originally gave me and he said they never got a repair order for our address, so I knew what she was saying wasn’t right.  She gave me the same story and assured me they had tried to get it fixed and would I like a refund or replacement refirgerator?  I pushed pretty hard to get her to call the repair center in a conference call, which she did.  Got them on the line and she went through the whole speel and then, dramatic pause here, gave them an address in a completely differnt town in a different county!  It was our old address before moving to a camp ground several weeks before.  We are at the same address that Home Depot delivered the refrigerator to, the same address I had given their support people, the same address they used to pick a repair company, but they were using an address from their computer to actually order the repair.

So that was why the repair company wouldn’t take the order.  Not that they were too busy for several weeks to get there, which was Samsung’s line.  But wait, there’s more.

Next I get another follow up call from some kind of dispatcher who goes through the whole does it have water? have you pushed the reset button? oh, you mean it worked and then quit? routine.  By chance, she also mentioned that they were sending them to the WRONG ADDRESS still!  If it weren’t so frustrating and time consuming, it would be funny.  Maybe in two or three years I can laugh about it.

The story isn’t finished yet, but I am hopeful we’ll get an actual service man out soon to fix the ice maker.  As to Samsung, they may make a good product.  It certainly cools well, and looks sharp.  But their customer service functions are pretty bad.  If I weren’t as persistent, it would have again gone through the same cycle of calling for service in the wrong location again, and again getting a cock and bull story about why they couldn’t get it fixed.  I’ll add an update once, and if, I get it fixed.

In the meantime,

Somewhere in Texas, in the heat, and no ice.

Final update, July 2016.  Finally got this fixed when they replaced the ice maker, but it didn’t initially make ice.  I talked to the service man and he said it wouldn’t make ice unless the freezer was below 14F.  It was at around 22F.  So I pulled the plug to completely reset the electronics and plugged it back in.  It took a day or so to get below 14F and then started making ice.  I had a wireless thermometer in the freezer and saw that it was getting way colder than the setting.  As low as -22F and seemed to vary a lot from the top to the bottom of the freezer.

Called Samsung again and finally convinced them that no I didn’t need a special Samsung thermometer to measure that temperature so they set up another service call to replace the fan.  When they took it apart, there was a long piece of plastic wrapped around the fan blade so it wouldn’t turn.  They replace the motor since it was apart already and was an authorized repair.  Now we finally have ice and lots of it.  It really is a nice refrigerator and very low on power consuption.  Just hope it lasts a long time without needing warranty repair.

July 2016