[Resolved]  Samsung / Side By Side Refrigerator — Known defrost problems

Before launching into my story, BBC Watchdog highlighted this series of refrigerators and Samsung suddenly woke up and extended teh warranties. Clearly, they know there's a problem.

We bought this refrigerator on Aug 22 2005 (model RS21NCSW) in Bangalore, India. We did not have any problems with it for almost 2 years or so. Then, we noticed that when the power went out briefly (we have a generator and the power almost always comes back within a minute), the fan was making a racket and the temperature in the fridge would rise abruptly (it's upto 18C and therefore food spoilage etc). Each time this happened, we called the Samsung service center. Each time the service technician was here and opened the back wall of the fridge section from the inside, there was chunk of ice in the well surroundng the fan. Now, it seemed obvious that the fans blades were hitting the ice and therefore the racket. Each time, I tried to get the service technicians to try and figure out why the ice was forming, the answer was the same, "we'll replace the fan, clear the ice the problem will go away". This is terrible servicing. The fan has been replaced 3 times.

There's 2 thoughts that come to mind regarding Samsung servicing.
1) They are trying to make money off their service department.
2) They simply have imcompetent people who do not enough training and are being told what steps to take if a particular problem occurs.

I would really like to believe that it's the second thought that's true, however distressing it is.

Now, I believe that this problem is not going to fix itself. And I don't want to continue gambling on the quality of food. I really would like to hear from Samsung about this issue. We are perfectly willing to pay for repair work if someone could figure out what's wrong. There has to be someone in the Samsung world who knows what to do when this problem happens. By the way, there's several reports on the web about this problem.

Here are the service dates:
June 1 2007
Nov 20 2007
Dec 14 2007
June 16 2008
Aug 12 2008

If anyone from Samsung needs any more information. I'll gladly help.
The latest call was on Sep 1st 2008. Called 30308282 on Sep 1st and reported the problem. Complaint # [protected]. Soon after, I called[protected]Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd) and asked to speak to a "manager". I wanted to know whether Samsung had acknowledged this problem in India (they seem to have in the UK). I spoke to one Mr. Babu Rao who said that the service engineer would be visiting etc and that the engineer would call in about an hour. This was at around 11am. Of course, nobody called. When I called the same office back, Mr. Babu Rao, of course, wouldn't come on the phone, but the person who received the call gave me the name and phone number of the technician (Rajesh, [protected]). This technician has been to check our fridge 3 of 5 previous reports of this problem. I spoke to him and he said that he was in Hennur and after that he would be coming to our place. In the meantime, the fridge temp was 18C and we couldn't figure out whether we should empty the fridge. Repeated calls to Rajesh were not successful, he simply wouldn't pick up the phone. My guess is that he is biding his time until his shift is done. This is service at its worst. So, it's 8:30pm and despite repeated assurances that the service engineer would be here are all lies.

Here are links to discussions of this problem worldwide:
http://forums.partselect.com/refrigerator-freezer-repair/condensor-freezing-samsung-refrigerator-9487-2.html
http://forums.partselect.com/refrigerator-freezer-repair/samsung-refrigerator-11956.html
http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/Samsung-RS21-fridge-defrost-repair-problems_W0QQugidZ[protected]this one is great!)
http://www.howtomendit.com/answers.php?id=76613
http://www.refrigeration-engineer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7618
http://www.unbeatable.co.uk/p_rupr/Samsung-RS21DCNS-American-Fridge-Freezer-Reviews/20815485.html
http://ukwhitegoods.co.uk/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&printer...⇄
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/refrigerator/samsung-rsh1dtmh/
http://reviews.cnet.com/refrigerators/samsung-rs2530bbp-side-by/[protected]_[protected].html