Kenmore is a Horrible Brand of Refrigerator!

by Pat
(St. Louis)

Horrible brand of refrigerator! We purchased our Kenmore top freezer refrigerator model 253.7924270 one brand new from Sears on Dec 17, 2007 for $750.


It died 2 & 1/2 years later on August 1st, 2010.

It all started when the ice maker quit making ice unless the temperature in my house was 65 degrees or less, then it worked fine. Eventually ice cream turned to soup, but everything else stayed frozen.

Inside the back of the freezer started icing up rapidly, needed to be defrosted just about every week as 2 to 3 inches of ice continued to form on the vents & coils inside the freezer.

After the last defrost of my frost free fridge/freezer, the whole thing quit cooling. The coldest my refrigerator would get was 60 degrees and my freezer would only get to 50 degrees. I turned the fridge off, unplugged it for a day and let it sit, plugged it back in and now it won't even run.

I called a highly recommended local repair facility, not wanting to wait for Sears to come out or to pay their prices for a service call.

The repairman said it was probably the compressor and that it would cost me $400 to $800 to fix. I ended up calling Kenmore directly, as I was told by a friend that all sealed compressors have a 5 year warranty on them. After talking to a person at Kenmore, he stated that normally their warranty was 5 years on a sealed compressor, but of course, he couldn't find any information that stated that on the model I bought.

I was then transferred to someone who could supposedly help research my warranty further...turns out the guy from Kenmore transferred me directly to the Sears repair facility. All that guy wanted to do was sell me a protection plan that wouldn't cover my current problem on my broken refrigerator.

After explaining my problem to the customer service guy again and that I think this repair should be covered by Sears, he then said he needed to transfer me to someplace else and they could help me further.

I got pretty much the same thing after being transferred...now they wanted to sell me a protection plan for my broken refrigerator. Ugh! Sooo, after getting no where with Sears or Kenmore, I'm now looking for a new refrigerator, again!

Fyi, I talked to several other appliance store salespeople and they had heard similar horror stories about Sears & Kenmore, too. My repairman suggested I buy a Whirlpool as they seem to have less problems with them.

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Sep 17, 2020
 A horrible NEW
by: Anonymous

We bought a Kenmore elite side-by-side refrigerator freezer in April 2018. In December 2019, the freezer iced up and the ice maker stopped working. We called Sears repair and the service tech defrosted the freezer and reset the control board. This past week, just nine months later, the same thing happened. We actually got the same service tech who performed the same repair but told us that the control board was bad because it wasn't controlling the freezer defrost function correctly and that while the reset was accomplished again, it was bound to fail eventually.

He added that it would cost almost $900 to replace it and it wasn't covered under warranty. The unit, itself cost $1,400.

I went online to see about replacing the control board and found out from Sears itself, that the part was no longer available.

Currently, I have been on hold for over an hour on the Sears Consumer Complaint line. I don't believe I will get any satisfaction from this horrible company that makes lousy products that are, according to our service tech, "built to fail" so that they can sell us a new one.

It's no wonder this company is going out of business. They make garbage products and have absolutely no loyalty to their customers.

Update: I have spoken to a representative, who listened to my complaint, told me that she can't help me and transferred me to someone else. I am now talking to the second Sears rep. After explaining the situation again, all of a sudden, the phone went quiet. What a surprise!

These people are scum.

Sep 06, 2010
 Sears Kemore Refrigerator (model #253-74879404)-- What a HORROR!!!!!!!!!
by: Anonymous

I purchased a Kenmore refrigerator(model #253-74879404) from Sears in '05. According to the label my unit was manufactured in 05.

Like clock work the refrigerator broke down on schedule-just as it came off warranty.

Sears charged a 65 dollar service charge and added that the repair would cost close to $500!!

Sears customer service is only "happy talk".

My advice...? Stay away from Kenmores and Sears!

I plan to replace this terrible piece of s--t with a Whirlpool refrigerator.


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