At first, although I am fairly handy, I decided to let the repair man handle my broken refrigerator. So I looked up a company that had 4.5/5 stars in a local county review magazine and then double checked the google reviews where the company also had received 4.5/5 stars. I called on Saturday and made an appointment for Wednesday morning.
Late
First sign of trouble. The repair man was supposed to arrive between 9am and 12am. A three hour window. At 12:07 I called the repair shop and asked if the repair man was coming? I was told yes, that he would arrive in 10 minutes. Then 2 minutes later the repair man called. I did not answer, as I thought it was a spam call. The repair man arrived soon after and claimed that he had called earlier and that I had not answered. This was partially true, he did call, but it was only after I had called the main office asking where he was. The repair man was implying that he had called me within the 3 hour appointment window, and that I did not answer, so that is why he did not show up. Unfortunately for him, the cell phone logs the time of all incoming calls, and I could see that he only called me once, and that it was after I had called the office.
Diagnosis 1
The repair man spends about 10 minutes fiddling with the refrigerator. He does not pull it away from the wall. Does not access the control board in the back. He does not use any test equipment, no volt meter, just a magnet. He just opens and closes the doors, and uses his magnet to make the refrigerator think the doors are closed. He call me over and states that the refrigerator evaporator fan is not working and that I need a new fan assembly. Okay, so how does he know the fan is bad without performing any diagnostics. I mean it could be the fan, or the wiring, or the electronic control board. Whatever, he is a professional right? He tells me the cost, including installation would be around $450.00. I was sticker shocked. How could a fan cost that much? I asked him if he could replace just the fan motor and not the whole fan assembly. He says that it comes as a unit and you must replace the whole thing. I did not believe him, as I had watched a few videos on Youtube where the person replaced just the fan motor and not the whole assembly. As further proof, the parts assembly diagram for the refrigerator clearly shows that you can purchase the whole assembly (120A) or just the fan motor (404C).
I left the repair man and went to another room to discuss the cost with my significant other. After a few minutes, I returned to the repair man, who was still inspecting/testing my refrigerator. He then shows me that cold air is being blown by the fan in the refrigerator. Yes the fan that a few minutes ago he said was broken, was now working. So if I had not balked at the first repair quote he would have happily ordered me an expensive replacement part for one that was not broken? That would have been fun. Then what, keep ordering and replacing parts until he gets it working? Is he actually a professional?
Diagnosis 2
He then opened the freezer, emptied it of food, and pulled the freezer evaporator fan assembly out. See picture below of the "broken" fan assembly. He claimed that this was the problem, that the freezer fans must not be working, as cold air from the freezer area was not being sent up to the refrigerator compartment. The freezer evaporator assembly has two fan motors on it. One for the ice maker and one for the freezer compartment. I ask him if both motors have gone bad and he says yes. I figure this is unlikely, as what is the chance that both fans went bad at the same time? It would more likely be the common electronic control board is broken than for two independent fans to fail simultaneously. He then states that he could replace the fan motors and not the whole assembly. I found that interesting, was he now giving me an option because I had asked about doing this with the refrigerator fan? He claims that with two fans, it would only be a little more expensive to replace the whole assembly. Something like $350.00 with labor. I was tired at this point and said ok to the repair. I ask when it can get fixed and he says maybe by Saturday. I don't hear back from the repair shop and call them on Saturday to see if the part has come in. The repair shop person says that the part was not ordered and that they needed to order it, then schedule a repair time. I told them to cancel ordering it.
Diagnosis 3
No, I did not have the repair man come back. Ok, as is usually the case, I have to learn more about refrigerators than I actually want to. Same goes with cars, doctors, and home improvements. So my model LG refrigerator has two evaporators and three fans. The freezer and refrigerator sections are separate. Or cooling isolated from each other. Each section has its own evaporator and fan. Some refrigerator models only have one evaporator in the freezer and then use a damper system to regulate freezer air into the refrigerator to keep it cool. Since my refrigerator has separate systems, a broken freezer evaporator fan would most likely not have any effect on the refrigerator compartment. Did I mention that the freezer and ice maker still work just fine? So its much more likely that my refrigerator not cooling properly has something to do with the parts in my refrigerator compartment, not the freezer.
Final review score
Did not show up in appointment window (-1) Implied that it was my fault for not answering a call that I never received (-1) Not being honest about replacing just the fan motor (-1) Not doing any real diagnostics to determine if parts to be replaced are actually bad (-1) Nearly replacing a working part for no reason (-1) Second diagnosis was also wrong (-1) Telling me that freezer air is used in cooling the refrigerator compartment, shows lack of knowledge (-1) So on a scale of 5 stars, I would rate the repair shop (-2/5), I guess it just defaults to zero. Unlike all the 5 star reviews, I give a clear reason for each of my deductions.
Reviews
Ok, in my opinion, this repair shop was no where near 4.5/5 stars. So how did they get such a good rating? I went back and started to read the 5 star reviews. The reviews appears legit as far as I could tell. Maybe it just came down to the person that they sent out? Maybe this was a brand new guy? I don't understand.
My diagnosis
I figured it may have something to do with the refrigerator evaporator fan. The service manual said that if you press the "test" button on the controller board one time, that all of the fans would turn on. I did this and the it appeared that all of the fans did indeed work. Although in my testing, I did this several times, I believe that the refrigerator fan did not always work. Its hard to tell, as I pressed the button several times and I don't think it works after it has been pressed, i.e. it has to finish the current test cycle before it will start a new one. I figured maybe the fan motor was intermittent, but it could still be a controller board problem. So following the service manual I measured the correct voltages at the controller board. I then removed and figured out how to test the evaporator fan. I could find nothing wrong with the controller board or the fan. About this time, we noticed that the ice cream was too soft. I quick check of the freezer showed that it was at -5C instead of the -17C setpoint. So it appeared that both the refrigerator and the freezer where having problems. With both sections of the refrigerator working, but not getting cold enough, I now strongly felt that it was a compressor issue. There are not many diagnostics for a compressor that is still "running". I also searched the internet at this time and found that my refrigerator was part of a class action lawsuit for having early compressor failures. Maybe I should have searched the internet earlier as this was a very important piece of the troubleshooting puzzle.
Calling LG
So I called up LG. Got a human representative rather quickly. The LG representative that I spoke with was very pleasant. After a few questions, he told me that my refrigerator was covered under the 5 year "no cooling event", which I think is part of the class action lawsuit. He said a repair and parts would be free. We scheduled a repair date and time.
Repair man #2
The second repair man showed up in the appointment time window. He even called 25 minutes before showing up. He listened to my story, about how both refrigerator compartments were not getting to the proper temperature and that I had verified that all the fans were working. He made a temperature measurement of the freezer to confirm it was not at the correct temperature. He then pull the unit away from the wall and did some diagnostics. Not sure exactly what, as I did not want to hover over him. He want back out to his truck and came back with a replacement compressor. I was very surprised, as I figured he would almost certainly have to order the part from the factory and I was going to have to wait again. Some time later, after a bunch of cutting, draining, welding, etc. I new compressor was installed in my refrigerator. Lets hope that LG has fixed the defect in their compressors and that the new one will actually last 20 years.