25th February 2022
Those were the days.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2022 at 08:00 and is filed under Think about it..
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February 25th, 2022 at 10:25
Corollary: The uglier the color, the longer the refrigerator lasts.
February 25th, 2022 at 12:41
In many respects.
February 25th, 2022 at 16:52
As a kid, I worked for a furniture store and delivered refrigerators. The boss would have us haul away the old one “for free”. We took them back to the store and once he had 5 or 10 of them in there, he’d have his refrigerator guy come and fix them. Usually they just needed a bit of freon. (This was before the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act that tightly restricted refrigerants.) We’d clean the unit out – and sometimes it was like cleaning out a death wagon. Scrub it down with baking soda and prop it open to air out and in a few days it was ok. Sometimes the old fiberglass insulation had to dry out, so it might be a bit longer. Then the boss would sell them to folks that couldn’t afford a new unit.
The heavier the refrigerator – and those old ones were TANKS! – the harder the location where it had to go. 300 lbs? Oh, it’s going on the 3rd floor of some place with narrow doors. They were built to last, but new units have much, much better insulation. If you could get the old compressor and coils with new insulation, it would survive nuclear war. I can’t tell you how many of these were on a back porch or in a garage.
At some point, I had a refrigerator that cost me $900. The compressor went out just past the warranty. Called for repair. The guy quickly diagnosed the problem on the phone, and then laid out the cost for repair at something close to $1000. After much head banging, I bought a new one for $1200. Just after the warranty was off, a tiny bit of plastic broke and rendered the ice delivery on the door useless. After many internet searches and phone calls, it turns out you have to replace the door. Cost? $800. But that was the cheapest price and required finding the original manufacturer. The initial quoted price was $1300. Yeah, more than the cost of the refrigerator. We went without getting ice through the door until the compressor failed.