Dear Viewers,
Here is our ordeal about a most trusted brand of Refrigerator in the words of My wife:-
’’we had a standard 165 liters Godrej refrigerator since 1990. My husband being in transferable job where move every second year is almost mandatory our refrigerator saw 08 moves of over 1000 kms each across the length and breadth of the country and the refrigerator worked perfectly fine.
It was in year 2000 on being posted to New Delhi that we decided to go in for bigger and state of art refrigerator.
I along with my husband carried out a detailed survey of the market in the capital over the internet and after much deliberation we settled for Whirl pool 285 ltrs refrigerator...It was frost free, double door non spilling plastic trays and above all backed by the brand supposedly the leaders in Home appliances in the world. It was then our ordeal with the product started...
My son’s birthday was on 02 sep 2000 and being excited with new refrigerator had planed to stuff it with all the possible goodies... but alas just a day before... the refrigerator stopped cooling...though the customer care service was satisfactory but the Sundays in-between delayed the proceedings...however the representative came and sorted the refrigerator and said that the fuse of the refrigerator had blown of....we thought it was just the case of bad luck.
Hardly a few months had passed that again the refrigerator stopped cooling the complaint was lodged and it was diagnosed that now the compressor had gone faulty ;it took quiet some time to get the new compressor from the company and the refrigerator was back home but with scared body.All went fine for some time but about a few months after almost all the plastic trays developed cracks and one tray just gave way.
We went to the customer care to get the tray and were offered a bill of about Rs 375 for the Plastic tray but then there was no way out no other tray would fit in. we coughed up the money and started devising ways to delay the process of breaking of the other tray by the way of fixing metal strips and small nuts and bolt.
The the next move came we were to move to Ranchi the refrigerator reached safely and worked fine for few months.. then suddenly the ice started forming all over the places inside the refrigerator ;we thought it may be one time problem we switched off the refrigerator for an hour and let the ice melt....... alas that was all in vain gave a call to the customer care. was apprised that the visit would cost Rs 150...My husband being an engineer himself thought it was high time to learn about the functioning of this refrigerator and felt the timer was not working and the heating cycle was not getting activated.....
The company representative was called and who too diagnosed the problem with the timer. new timer was purchased after coughing up another Rs 425. We thought the problem would end now.....it was just over month again the fault repeated the customer care was approached the rep came and manually moved the timer again and told us to wait and watch....it worked fine for another two months and then it was summers same problem again erupted another rep came and adjusted the micro control of thermostat and told us to wait and watch...
It worked fine for a month and again the problem arouse having fed up of calling customer care rep and removing all the items in and out of the refrigerator when ever the customer care rep would come at his own sweet time ; and realizing that the rep visit without any concrete result my husband opened the panel where timer is fixed moved it and placed it out side the cover to be able to manually move the timer switch if the problem arose...
It has been over four months now the refrigerator is working fine and we do not have to move the the timer even once but every time some guest come and happen to open the refrigerator do ask us about what part of the refrigerator control do we have hanging on on the tray...and we have to tell them the complete story...
Present status is as follows:-
............ The timer is hanging on the tray.
...................Almost all trays have strips with nut bolts to avoid cracking of plastic tray.
.......The plastic hinge on door restricting opening of the door completely is broken.
....there is always a fear in the mind maybe tomorrow the refrigerator will again stop cooling
................Sheetal’’
......................Hoping the other consumers learn some lesson from our ordeal and do not go in for such products.
Rajeev