Terry Pulliam Burd wrote:
>
> After running all over southern California...okay, all over Orange
> County, I have now looked at just about everything that's available in
> a French door, stainless (or stainless-like) refrigerators. I
> discounted units with through-the-door water and ice dispensers,
> mainly b/c my experience with them has not been positive and they take
> up way, way too much refrigerator door space. I also had a very
> subjective door-closing "test," as I found most of the Whirlpool
> umbrella units had one or both doors that didn't close well. This
> would start out as a minor irritant and segue into a major irritation,
> I suspect. I also wanted a refrigerator that was "Energy Star
> compliant." Taking all this into consideration plus shelf and drawer
> design, we settled on a Samsung:
>
> http://www.number1direct.com/product.jhtm?id=81749
>
> Bill found the unit I liked online and they offer free shipping and no
> sales tax (in this part of SoCal, sales tax is a whopping 8%). We're
> paying an extra $90 to have it brought into the house, uncrated and
> installed, so what we saved on the sales tax got pretty much eaten up
> by the delivery, but most of the stores I visited charge $75 - 125 to
> deliver, uncrarte and install. Also, the cheapest price I found for
> this same unit was at The Great Indoors and was $1,449. Some of the
> reviews on this refrigerator complained that it was noisy when making
> ice, so we'll see if that's a problem. Can't insulate yourself against
> every vagary, but I did the best I could. And I thank everyone who
> contributed to the original thread. Many comments were very helpful.
>
> I am going to be thrilled to send my current refrigerator to the Happy
> Cooking Grounds! Damned thing even has rust forming around the
> through-the-door ice dispenser, which hasn't worked in 2 years. Just
> drips from errant ice cubes that fall into the spout from the freezer.
>
> Terry "Squeaks" Pulliam Burd

Sounds like it should be a good unit. Sales tax here runs 8-8.25%, but
no state income tax more than makes up for that.

I have water and ice dispensers in the freezer door of my side by side
door refrigerator and I haven't have any issues with it. During the
winter months when I'm not using much ice, the ice will sometimes clump
up and I just empty the ice drawer and let it make a fresh batch, but
the same is true even if you don't have the dispensers. During the
summer months it gets a lot of use getting ice for iced tea and the like
and is a big improvement over having to open the freezer door to get ice
along with the resulting wasted energy and frost issues.