Refrigocalypse Redux

Almost exactly four years ago this week came the Refrigocalypse. COVID was freshly at our heels, the world’s supply chains had shut down, and my refrigerator, my specifically-sized, hard to find a replacement for at the best of times refrigerator, had stopped working.

After trying some DIY solutions, I threw up my hands and ordered the one fridge that was the right size that I could find in Charlottetown. And it’s been there since, dutifully serving us with its cooling magic.

Last summer there was a break in the cooling, rectified by some mystical incantations, a vacuuming of the coils under the fridge, and a period of contemplative silence. That fixed it.

This summer, no such luck.

We’ve been staying up the street at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, helping care for their cat while they’re away. While we’ve been away from our fridge, we’ve been hosting home exchange guests, and the guests reported that, upon leaving on Sunday, while the freezer was fine, the fridge had stopped working.

I returned for some more mystical incantations, and this appeared to work. Bullet dodged. But then the problem reoccured yesterday, and I scrambled to bring in professional help.

My first call, to our usual appliance repair guy, revealed that he was booking into next week (I asked the person who answered his phone if she could recommend someone else; her reply was “well, he’s my grandson, so I usually just call him.”)

Another call, another booking-into-next-week.

I tried the Whirlpool website, where, I remembered, I’d registered the fridge when I’d purchased it in 2020. This looked promising: the record of the fridge was there, and there was a button to request service. When I clicked the button, however, it turned out that the website to request service for your broken fridge was itself broken:

Finally I did what I should have done in the first place, and called Birt’s Furniture, where I’d bought the fridge, and asked them for referrals. They suggested I call Matt Dollar, which I did. I left a message; Matt called back 20 minutes later, and told me he could be over in the morning.

This morning he called when he was 10 minutes out, and we met at the house as scheduled.

The diagnosis: the fridge isn’t defrosting properly, likely due to a faulty “jazz board,” the electronic control board that manages this feature among others. He would need to order one from Ontario, and, while we’re waiting for it to arrive, he recommended leaving the fridge off for 24 hours to let it defrost all on its own, after which it should have enough get up and go to get us through to install date.

Stay tuned.