Our Two Year Old Refrigerator Absolutely Sucks
Two years ago, we needed a new refrigerator as soon as possible since our previous refrigerator suddenly bit the dust and was unrepairable. Unfortunately, finding anything during the pandemic that requires circuit boards for manufacture was exceptionally difficult. Our best option at the time (pretty much our only option) was to purchase a Whirlpool side-by-side refrigerator and I have regretted this purchase every single day since it arrived in our kitchen.
We didn't want a Whirlpool refrigerator. In fact, we didn't even care for this Whirlpool refrigerator nor was there a single feature that attracted us to this cheap product (cheap refers to quality, never is it an adjective for price). It is a rather generic refrigerator but at a cost of a mid-tier appliance. Unfortunately, we had no choice and needed a refrigerator as soon as possible and we knew to avoid the low-tier refrigerators. Even so, we had to wait about a week for this new appliance to arrive. The good news is that it was February so we were able to use an unheated storage closet as our temporary refrigerator and our trash shed as a freezer.
Within a year, one of our primary shelves in the main part of the refrigerator was broken (cracked). These cheap, thin glass shelves don't even fit into the refrigerator all that well. If they are not centered perfectly, or happen to slide to one side, the shelf will drop off the shelf rest. Shortly after, I noticed that one of our cheap molded plastic door shelves was cracked. Now, just two years after this piece of junk arrived in our home, one of the drawers is broken too.
As if that isn't bad enough, the biggest complaint I have about this garbage is that you need to be a contortionist to access anything in the fridge. Sometimes you need to empty half the fridge to get at what you want... contorting yourself each time you take something out and then each time you are painstakingly putting stuff back. This is like stabbing my spinal injuries with an ice pick. Take note... if you have any sort of spinal injuries limiting your ability to reach with weight in your hand or twist with weight in your hand, forget about an overly deep, standard width, side-by-side piece of junk.
The drawers have never slid in and out easily... why would they? This thing is a piece of junk. Cheap sheet metal drawer slides = junk and frustration. Now one of the drawers has a broken slide. This broken drawer slide is what set me off on this rant.
The shelves on the inside of the doors are so deep that you only have mere inches to squeeze into the fridge when the door is opened. With the door open, the deep shelves on the inside of the door are so deep that they block access to at least half the width of the narrow refrigerator of this side-by-side unit. This is why you need to be a contortionist to move things in and out of this frustrating piece of junk.
Nobody will ever convince me that US-made products are better than products made in any other country. The quality of any product is determined by what the manufacturer is willing to pay for manufacturing and, quite honestly, US manufacturers are cheap. It is a total myth that US-made products are of higher quality than products made in the rest of the world.
Here is a little free lesson on the basics of manufacturing. No matter where you are in the world, when you go to a manufacturing factory to have your product manufactured, the price per unit is based on a few factors. The primary factor is one that just about everybody knows and understands now because they see this in grocery stores, building supply stores and bulk-supply "clubs"... the more units you have manufactured, the lower the unit cost will be.
Perhaps the second-most important factor that determines manufacturing cost is the tier of quality that is required in manufacturing. The higher the quality control standards, requiring tighter tolerance standards, the more it will cost you per unit. Virtually all manufacturers balk at high quality control standards because they need to keep manufacturing costs as low as possible... and this definitely includes manufacturing inside the US where factory overhead is exponentially higher than many other countries (but not all). Contrary to popular belief, even China produces products in the "excellent" to "outstanding" quality range. Most product developers/manufacturers refuse to pay for this premium service, however. That being said, the vast majority of premium quality optics and scientific instruments are made in China today.
This reminds me of a scene in the movie "Back to the Future" when Marty and Doc are trying to figure out what part failed in the DeLorean DMC-12 converted to a time machine leaving it stranded in the future. It is the 1980s and Doc pulls an electronic chip out of the DeLorean and notices it is fried. Doc, who is from the 1950s, says, "no wonder it failed... it says it's made in Japan!" Marty then educates Doc in the fact that all the best electronics now (the 1980s) come from Japan. Japan still is producing high quality electronics but few manufacturers actually manufacture in Japan due to rising costs. Most manufacturers have moved their manufacturing to China in the 21st century. And, just like in any other country, a manufacturer can pay for economy grade manufacturing or they can pay for high quality manufacturing. Just like Doc who was instantly transported 30 years into the future and erroneously assumed manufacturing quality had not changed in decades, China, today, is definitely capable of producing top quality products contrary to popular belief. The blame for poor quality junk coming out of China is solely on the product development manufacturers because they are the ones who have chosen economy grade manufacturing. You get what you pay for no matter your location.
There are other factors that determine manufactured price per unit but these two mentioned above are the primary factors. Very, very few corporations today are all that concerned with paying for quality and there are a number of factors driving that bad attitude.
First, no manufacturer wants to get stuck with a boatload of products that have a design flaw that was overlooked in the design and prototype stage so high-volume manufacturing is avoided. Next, on-demand manufacturing has become the norm today which results in numerous small batches of manufacture instead of a large batch that requires immense warehouse storage and even a tax burden. Consequently, the desired smaller batches drive the price per unit up very quickly.
Most, if not all, manufacturers are far less concerned about quality today. Product lifespan is short by design, unfortunately. The theory is that if a product hits the end of its lifespan, then we will just sell another. Therefore, the lower the quality, the higher the demand. They are creating an artificial demand for their product(s) by pushing quality lower. I definitely do not agree with this theory on a moral and environmental standpoint but until lemon laws are created and enforced in the manufacturing international world, this is what we get.... low cost garbage, no matter which country is the country of manufacture.... period. And, quite honestly, considering the overhead required to run a factory in the US, the US is prone to producing lower quality products because they need to cut corners in manufacturing just to come close to competing. And, that is putting aside the fact that skilled labor is lacking in the US today anyway.
It seems that the general population thinks that the quality of a manufactured product is mostly dependent upon the quality of the factory worker... it is not. Quality, quite simply, is driven by manufactured cost per unit.
In short, our "made in the USA" refrigerator, by Whirlpool, absolutely sucks but it should come as no surprise. US corporations are cheap. Some would say, and do say, US corporations are thieves who are raping their customers as well as the environment (which is a whole other topic for another day).
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UPDATE: May 14th, 2025 - As time passes, I actually despise this refrigerator more and more. Every single time I try to access something inside this piece of junk, I swear about how much a hate this thing.
The latest problem to develop with this refrigerator is that our ice dispenser is breaking drinking glasses. The ice falls downward into the glass with such force that the ice cubes occasionally break a glass! What doesn't help at all is the fact that the paddle to dispense water or ice requires far too much pressure on the paddle to activate dispensing water or ice. We have resorted to pushing down the paddle with the back of our fingers as we delicately hold the glass between thumb and fingers or use two hands... one to depress the paddle and one to hold the glass.
This thing is just an absolute piece of junk.
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