Complaint Review: EdgeStar Products - Austin Texas

I bought a small 5.6 cubic foot refrigerator (brand name EdgeStar from kegerator.com on 3/28/11. Warranty on unit was 90 days parts and labor, 1 year on parts. The unit arrived by FedEx on March 31, 2011 in good shape at my residence. In unpacking the unit, I took it out of a heavy duty outer box. The interior box was destroyed as the bottom breaks away so the sides can be removed so you dont have to lay the unit on its side to get it out of the box. I tried to save the outer box, but it rained that week, and the box was too big for me to store inside. When I tried to fold it up, so I could store it out of the rain, the corners were so heavily reinforced it would not fold and got damaged.

Plugged unit in, would not get cold (55dF). I contacted them by an internet e-mail form on their site on April 12, 2011 asking them about the unit not getting cold. They sent me instructions on the same day on how to adjust the thermostat. I adjusted thermostat per instructions. Unit would not get below 70-75dF.  I kept trying to adjust for several days (takes 24 hours, according to instructions, to verify changes.)

On April 20, 2011 I called their service department. They (EdgeStar Technical Support)advised me I had ruined the thermostat, and voided the warranty on the thermostat, and charged me $58 plus $9 shipping on a new thermostat (even though their sales web site (living direct.com) advertised the same replacement thermostat at the same price with free shipping).

The thermostat arrived on April 24. Installing it involved taking off the back interior panel of the unit, removing a plastic insulating tube from a flexible copper probe about two feet long, reinstalling the plastic tube on the new thermostat probe, wrapping the exposed end of the probe around clips on the back of the back interior panel, reinstalling the back interior panel and connecting the wires to the thermostat. No instructions provided.

Before proceeding, in fear of voiding the warranty on the entire unit, I called the service department on April 25, 2011 and asked if they had any instructions on installing the thermostat, and also why was I charged for this when the unit was supposed to be under warranty. The technician advised he didn't have any instructions, didn't think I was capable of installing the thermostat, and he would send me shipping labels to return just the unit but I had to provide the boxes.

Online research for a couple of hours reveals the two boxes (one not even the correct size, but I could make it work) would cost me around $60.

Unwilling to spend any more money on this unit, I installed the new thermostat and the unit temperature remained unchanged (70-75dF).  I then called an appliance repairman to verify the unit's heat exchanger was defective to see if I could just get the unit fixed myself. The appliance repairman said it would cost more than the unit was worth to fix it. I then contacted the EdgeStar Service Department by e-mail on April 27, 2011 and provided them a copy of the invoice from the appliance repairman and asked them to ship me a new unit and I could send the old unit back to them in the same boxes. They refused.

I  contacted them later on the same day and sent them web pages of the potential costs of the boxes to return the unit and again asked them to either send me boxes or a new unit so I could reuse the old boxes. To date, no response.

The requirement for the customer to incur additional costs to return the unit in effect makes the warranty worthless. Tricking a customer into adjusting the thermostat and then charging them for a new one is also a violation of the warranty.