Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Original poster

Please tell me about your "american style" fridge freezers

64 replies

00100001 · 21/06/2021 09:58

we want a bigger fridge freezer. we can't decide whether to have a side-by-side - or one where the freezer has drawers beneath the fridge.

do we bother with water/ice dispensers? if so, should we plumb it in or refill from tap manually?

please help me - I bow down to the wisdom of mumsnet :)

OP posts:
Roselilly36 · 25/06/2021 07:36

Not a fan, we brought an LG American FF when we had our kitchen replaced, it was plumbed for filtered water, cubed or crushed ice. Hated the bloody thing, things I didn’t like were the freezer glass shelves rather than baskets, water ice dispenser takes up a lot of room, it was still going strong after 10yrs! I had had enough of it by then, and ordered a new LG FF fridge freezer.

Reallyreallyborednow · 25/06/2021 07:44

@AncientandFabulous

We have the Samsung with freezer drawers, deli drawer & sparkling water. The Ice maker - well I’ve lost count the amount of times I’ve had someone to fix it. The engineers have now told me it’s a known fault & I’m waiting for that in writing. I have to make ice regularly which is annoying. We’ve had it for 4 years & the Ice maker hasn’t ever really worked. I really don’t rate Samsung & their customer service is terrible

As i said upthread, easiest and cheapest way to sort the icemaker is buy a new one from ebay/samsung. About £70. Unscrew the old, screw in the new. Cheaper than getting it fixed professionally- are they replacing the unit or repairing?

lightlypoached · 25/06/2021 07:49

We've got a fisher and paykel 90cm wide. It's fabulous, has a chilled water dispenser and a drawer inside that collect ice from the inbuilt ice maker. Huge capacity. Looks lovely.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Home improvement
Cardboard33 · 25/06/2021 08:06

We had our kitchen redone earlier this year and got an American fridge freezer. It's great, although it's a small one due to the fact we needed to fit it in a certain space and our kitchen isn't huge. Ours is from Fridge Master and has the fridge and freezer side by side, and no water dispenser. We didn't intend to get one but then realised how much more freezer space we'd get if we did without compromising the fridge space so ended up designing that part of the kitchen around it to ensure it fitted. As others have said you also need to ensure you have X cm excess space at the back and front to allow the doors to open which was nearly a deal breaker with us, but we got there. I love it and think it's been the game changer of the kitchen. Only regret is that we've now completely filled the freezer and don't have space anywhere else in the house (no garage) for a spare, but it's still about 3 times more freezer space than we would have had with the "standard" fridge freezer we were originally planning to buy and it was also cheaper.

marthasmum · 25/06/2021 08:41

I obsessively researched ours via which and although I drove DO mad, I’m glad I did. Made me think about disadvantages I wouldn’t have otherwise considered eg glass shelves, and the amount of freezer space v fridge. We have a fridgemaster which was comparatively cheap but I’ve been very happy with it. I do have an extra freezer though as there are 5 of us and the freezer space in it turned out to be too small. If I’d have had more money and space I’d have gone for the Samsung separate tall fridge and freezer. You can join which for free for one month.

LittleBlackCat22 · 25/06/2021 08:46

We’ve got separate fridge and freezer that bolt together into a giant American unit. So the freezer is the same size as the fridge I stead of slimline. We love it, except it costs so much money to fill it Grin

AncientandFabulous · 25/06/2021 08:46

[quote Reallyreallyborednow]@AncientandFabulous

We have the Samsung with freezer drawers, deli drawer & sparkling water. The Ice maker - well I’ve lost count the amount of times I’ve had someone to fix it. The engineers have now told me it’s a known fault & I’m waiting for that in writing. I have to make ice regularly which is annoying. We’ve had it for 4 years & the Ice maker hasn’t ever really worked. I really don’t rate Samsung & their customer service is terrible

As i said upthread, easiest and cheapest way to sort the icemaker is buy a new one from ebay/samsung. About £70. Unscrew the old, screw in the new. Cheaper than getting it fixed professionally- are they replacing the unit or repairing?[/quote]
No they have tried that. Apparently it’s a well known fault. Basically it’s frozen around the ice maker. When they come to repair they have to blow torch the ice maker to remove. Then blowtorch the ice around & chisel the rest out. They’ve told me there is no point coming out again. Maybe we’ve been unlucky. They’ve told me they rebranded in the US with a different model number as there is a class action lawsuit against them for this thing. But I’ve looked & can’t find anything to verify that but that is what my local Samsung engineer & receptionist have told me.

MargaretThursday · 25/06/2021 09:41

We've just changed ours.
It's plumbed in with ice and we love it. It's fantastic in the summer to have ice on tap Grin

We did have a Samsung. But after 3-4 years it started a thing where it had to be defrosted every 6 months getting more frequent, other wise the fan froze up.
When we phoned the repairs place it turned out it was a known fault with some Samsung. They repaired it, we got another couple of years before it started again. This time it went down hill very quickly, and we'd defrosted it 3 times by the end of April.

So we decided to call it a day and get a new one. Looking on line, this known fault, bearing in mind we got ours in around 2010, they haven't sorted it!
If they haven't sorted it in this time, then I don't have too much hope so we now have a LG, which seems to be fine.

The other thing is that they may need to take the doors off to get it into your house, so choose a company that will deliver it to the kitchen and do that!

randomkey123 · 25/06/2021 09:46

Our 1st one was a Maytag, and we were gutted when it broke after 15 years! It was solid, good quality and the drawers were cavernous plus it had drink holders built in etc. We replaced with a Samsung and it's an absolute crock of shit. The drawers are plastic and brittle - in 4 years we've replaced nearly all of them at least once. The water filter last 3 months and then chimes at you to replace. And it gets incredibly irate when you're loading the shopping and beeps loudly. I've had to start unplugging it if it's a big shop as it sends me mad. The quality on them is appalling, and as the owner of a Samsung washing machine too, their customer service is non existent. It took nearly 4 months to get someone out to resolve an issue. Avoid like the plague.

coco123456789 · 25/06/2021 09:48

We have a Samsung with fridge at top and freezer at bottom. No water or ice thing as I knew the kids would just play with and also we have a tap so don’t know why we would want water to come from the fridge?! I think it’s very personal in how you shop and what sort of food you buy. 3 drawers in the freezer is fine for us as I like to keep food on rotation and don’t want stuff hiding away at the bottom of the freezer for a year! The drawers in the freezer are each quite deep so hold a really good amount.

MargaretThursday · 25/06/2021 10:12

No water or ice thing as I knew the kids would just play with and also we have a tap so don’t know why we would want water to come from the fridge?!
There's a child lock you can use to stop them playing with it.

Water is filtered and cold. Plus the ice. It's lovely.

Original poster
00100001 · 25/06/2021 10:17

"No water or ice thing as I knew the kids would just play with and also we have a tap so don’t know why we would want water to come from the fridge?!"

but it's colder from fridge, which is lovely for hot days etc - we currently fill up a glass water bottle but we're lazy and hate refilling it LOL

OP posts:
ZZTopGuitarSolo · 25/06/2021 19:14

No they have tried that. Apparently it’s a well known fault. Basically it’s frozen around the ice maker. When they come to repair they have to blow torch the ice maker to remove. Then blowtorch the ice around & chisel the rest out. They’ve told me there is no point coming out again. Maybe we’ve been unlucky. They’ve told me they rebranded in the US with a different model number as there is a class action lawsuit against them for this thing. But I’ve looked & can’t find anything to verify that but that is what my local Samsung engineer & receptionist have told me.

Yeah - there are various class action suits out there. I was invited to join an LG one.

I also had a (different) fridge where the ice maker constantly iced up and stopped working. We used to pour boiling water through it to de-ice it. Since then I've never bought the fridges where the ice maker is on the front - always the ones where the ice maker is actually in the freezer.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page