Yesterday, with the push of a button, I managed to break the freezer. We bought this small (15.8 CF) Whirlpool freezer in 2016 for $510 at Lowes and it has run fine since then. Then I decided to push the button that allows you to lower the temperature since it had always kept the temperature at 10°F and not zero, as I would wish. The compressor promptly quit running. Hmmm. That's not good. No amount of button-pushing or pressing-and-holding of buttons changed anything. I even resorted to reading the owner's manual. Still no joy.
So, after moving what food we could to the upstairs refrigerator freezer compartment and throwing out the rest, I took the screws holding the "user interface" (that's the part name) out and let everything warm up and dry out from the condensation in the vain hope that maybe some ice was holding contacts apart or something. Nope, nothing doing.
Oh well, glad we didn't have a pile of filet Mignon steaks in there or anything. We threw out maybe $100 worth of food. Not a budget-buster, but I hated the waste.
Looking up the part, I find that the retail price of this little circuit board with about a dozen parts on it ranges from $477 at Whirlpool's site to $250 at some unknown site, and the photo of that part only vaguely looks like the one in my freezer. A known-reputable site wants $365 for it. So now the discussion is do we buy a new freezer or roll the dice and buy the part and hope that fixes the problem. Similar freezers at Lowes and Home Depot are about $650 to $700 now. We're leaning toward a new freezer, and I am more than a bit annoyed at the price-gouging for the part. If it was just me I'd throw the thing out and be done with it but DW wants a freezer.
BTW, did you know that you can spend NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS on a home freezer? Wow. I found that one at a local appliance store, so I guess we won't be shopping there. It can have a custom front on it but I didn't see anything else about it to justify that price.
