Horrible Reviews on popular Samsung replacement for Norcold 1200

[SewFishy]

RF18 three years old after ripping the leaking Notcold out and tossing it in Texas after it fourth failure. Month ago fridge stopped working but freezer kept on freezing. Independent tech here (Appliance Repair Miami) came out, removed the tower cooling panel inside, defrosted the unit and replaced the defrost thermostat sensor that tells the motherboard the defrost heater needs to come on if it detects freezing temperature on the internal coils. If this goes bad it freezes up the coils and will no longer circulate cold air from the vents. Ice will also push out the vents.The sensor was shorted because condensate got inside.The new sensor is hermetically sealed and apparently nitrogen charged. Samsung came out with these new sensors fairly recently. The tech said they see them all time on "older" units with the Samsung cooling tower design. Over biult he said. Other than that I would NEVER have any other unit in our rig. YMMV.

[PaulMears]

JR and JC Refrigeration in Shipshewana, IN, just replaced my Dometic cooling unit with his 12 VDC compressor kit. (JR has both absorption, 120 VAC, and 12 VDC replacement kits for Norcold and Dometic.) In three hours we left with the ice cream frozen!!!!

This unit uses about 70 watts when operating about 25% of the time. A 100 watt solar panel battery charger will let you boone dock for ever.

JR, his son, and the rest of his crew are great folks. They continue the Amish tradition of quality and dependability.

And, I got to keep my matching door panels. And, I did not have to modify my cabinets to accommodate a household refrigerator.

Other useful information - Shipshewana has the biggest flea/antique market in the mid-west and there is a lot of other stuff going on in the area. It is a great place to visit while getting a long term problem solved.

[astrnmrtom]

The issue of water flooding the interior of the crispers and fridge bottom on the older RF18s are due to ice build up in the defrost drain area which plugs the drain. The defrosting coil has a finger that sits in the opening of the drain. It didn't extend far enough into the drain opening, and also didn't pick up enough heat from the coil which caused the drain to ice over. When that happened water would back up and drip into the interior of the refrigerator compartment. Samsung now makes a clip that snaps over the heating coil that is supposed to keep the drain clear of ice. The clip extends down into the opening of the drain further. Here's an example on Amazon for just over $5: Search for SAMSUNG CLIP DRAIN EVAPORATOR REFOEM Original Part: DA61-06796A. There were people making their own fix using copper wire wrapped around the coil and extending down into the drain to do the same thing.

We put a Fisher Paykel in our rig, but only because the Samsung would stick out into our already narrow bathroom doorway and was a pretty tight fit height wise. We've had a Samsung 26CF Refrigerator in our house for over ten years without a single issue. The Fisher Paykel has shelves that adjust up or down every inch but it also had an odd crisper drawer arrangement where crispers sit in a full width drawer that requires both main doors be open to pull out. There's no way to just pull out each crisper individually. The Fisher Paykel uses an inverter to power the DC compressor.

Regarding Samsung's warranty service: My daughter works for a local appliance company and has warned me never to buy a Samsung appliance - not because they are bad appliances, but because solving warranty issues is often a nightmare. Her service guy hates Samsung for that reason and her company was considering dropping Samsung from their line-up because of the hassles with getting Samsung to honor their warranties. They were having to eat too many warranty repairs because Samsung was refusing to accept the warranty claims and was often very slow to ship parts.

Does that mean Samsungs are a bad refrigerator? Not really, as I've said ours has been completely trouble free and we probably would have picked up an RF18 if it had fit.

Keep one thing in mind when researching things on forums. People are much more likely to post to with problems on a particular subject than those who don't, so the data you are using is bias toward the negative.

[super_rep]

We have a Whirlpool Gold that has been in our 2004 Monaco since the coach was new. We are full timers and the refrigerator is in use 100% of the time. Couldn't be happier. It hasn't given us any trouble and it sure is great to have hard ice cream.

[Roadking52]

Originally Posted by irishguy

Does anyone know if the Haier Fridges can work well on a modified sine inverter like a Samsung can?



irishguy

I have been running a Haier 10 cf fridge on MSW for years. My wife says it’s one of the few things I’ve done right.

[RJ of Oregon]

I just replaced our Nevercold 1210 with a GE GWE19JSLSS model. I had it narrowed down to 4 choices...the Samsung RF18, Haier HRQ16, GE GWE19 and the Fisher & Paykel RF170B6N.

-Samsung model had too many bad reviews so I crossed it off the list

-The Haier seemed to be the cheapest, in price and quality, and I don't like to buy the cheapest quality.

-F & P was just too expensive but I thought it to be the best looking fridge of the bunch even though it was a single door refer, bottom freezer model.

-GE had relatively good reviews and even though it's owned by Haier, my research showed it to be of slightly better quality than the Haier model on my list.



Bought the GE from Costco online. Costco gives you an extra 1 year warranty, on top of the standard year from GE, and by using my Costco Citi card Costco gives you another 2 years. So a 4 year warranty on a fridge that normally comes with a 1 year warranty. Plus if I do need a service call then I call Costco's Concierge Service and they do all the dirty work in getting you scheduled. Pretty good deal I thought...oh and Costco had it for $100 less than any place else I looked (Lowes, Best Buy, Home Depot, AJ Madison, Amazon and so on).


My 1210 had a big and deep drawer below it and at first I was going to just lower the sub-floor 6.5", to allow for the extra height of the GE, and cut the drawer down to reinstall it. But then I decided to just loose the drawer completely as that way I didn't have to worry about rebuilding the floor.






I insulated the sides of the cabinet with foam core board and the back with standard fiberglass insulation. The access panels were insulated after the new fridge was installed.







The delivery guys had no problem with removing the fridge doors in order to fit it through my 27.8" wide entry. You can see our temporary "Red Neck Fridge" on our patio. Got that on Craigslist for $100 delivered and it cools better than any fridge I've ever had...go figure.




Since I decided to lose the bottom drawer I now have extra space above the new unit which I will make into a storage space. I'll do this by removing the old drawer's front, cutting it to fit and use spring hinges to make it open straight up. Of course some type of base will be used in the storage space instead of using the top of the fridge case.

[docj]

Looks great!! That's what I'm going to do if my Samsung RF197 ever bites the dust! Thanks for sharing.

Joel (AKA docj)