Customer Reviews

Samsung : RFG297AARS 29 cu. ft. French-Door Refrigerator - Real Stainless

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I think this is the best designed refridgerator available as far as space and convenience goes.

First, it has the largest capacity, at 29 cubic feet. It is the same exterior size as a 26 cubic feet unit, but has tighter packed insulation so there is more area inside. The shelving is efficient and flexible. There is a lot of storage in the door.

I think the design is much better than the LG refridgerator. LG has the icemaker in the door, so there is hardly any door storage. The layout of the shelves isn't as good either.

Second, all the interior components are well made. The drawers are solid and roll out it easy. In the GE and Westinghouse refridgerators, the drawers are cheap and hard to slide in and out. (Samsung used to make the GE and Westinghouse refridgerators, but might not anymore).

Third, the icemaker and cold water dispenser is at an angle. It takes up less door space, so there is less room lost inside, and it made so that any size pitcher can be filled.

The downsides:

1. The icemaker has a small capacity and is slow to refill. But, it has been good enough for us.

2. It is a little noisy sometimes and sometimes makes a high pitched whine.

French door refridgerators are all the rage now. They have been around since the 1950s, but never caught on until now. The leaders were the two Korean companies, LG (which used to be Lucky and Goldstar) and Samsung. These two companies made most of the french door refridgerators for all different brands.

If you don't need the indoor ice dispenser, some have an icemaker down in the freezer compartment. This opens up even more room in the refridgerator section.

UPDATE: I FORGOT THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE:
The cheese drawer on this slides underneath the door shelves. That means, you do not have to open the doors all the way to slide out the cheese drawer. I cannot swing both doors fully open. On most refridgerators, that means the cheese/meat drawer hits the door shelves and you can only open it a little bit. With the Samsung, you can just open the doors 90 degrees and still get full access to the drawer.

Ok, 1st things first - a- Icemaker works fine, and we use it for our Florida summer Margaritas... and for our nightly icewater, and for a 3 person household, all the way around plenty o'ice. This seems to be a mjor issue in the reviews. There is a 36 hour icemaker setup procedure included by Samsung that we followed exactly, and no problems at all with ice.

We got the beast from Best Buy, best price (at the time of this writing, ~ [..]-2,100 (we paid 2100), and 36 months no interest payments vs 12 months from Lowes and Sears.

My wife thinks we lost room in the doors, we made up a ton of room in the freezer, plus the rightside door is plenty of room.

Great configurations, pizza tray is lost on us in the freezer, but the Costco worthy bottom freezer keeps plenty o' meat for me.Well worth it in space, delivery was fine, no issues with service as we have not called in, delivery was great. The delivery guys said they delivered one elsewhere where the recipient paid [..] or so, may not have been the real stainless one.

Would buy it again, that's the best i can say. Only issue, what a pain in the butt keeping the stainless smudgefree! Its our 1st stainless fridge!

Excellent piece of machinery, build quality is top notch, unit is quiet as a church mouse. Most importantly, the cooling capability is restaurant quality. The two zones works incredibly well. Anyone who knocks this fridge because of ice production is in need of an Igloo, because this it produces boat loads of ice. Recovery time may not be super quick but name a fridge that.

FIrst Impressions:

1) cooling is excellent, cools evenly food lasts a long time.
2) Power Cool/Freeze feature is sheer genius. Froze my melted ice cream in less than an hour
3) Door Seal system is designed to last and function as it should
4) Freezer has loads of space, a little tricky to find stuff, but two tiers of storage help this quite a bit
5) Water tastes clean, clear, crisp and refreshing. Did a side by side taste test with Poland Spring, couldn't tell the difference
6) slow-to-bright LEDs are a wonderful feature, very slick
7) One of the full size shelves in the fridge is potentially useless
8) Wine bottle holder IS useless and so is the egg bin
9) EZ open handle on Freezer makes it effortless to open door, all others I tried required a good tug, which adversely effects seals.
10) Door alarm is very useful

I bought this fridge without investigating any reviews of it. While waiting for it to be delivered, I started to read reviews of the fridge and was scared that ice production would be an issue. I use a lot of ice in my beverages and live in Texas, so I go through plenty of ice. I have never had any issues with ice production. That included a week where five people were constantly using the ice. I simply followed the directions to set up the ice production.

The fridge has an incredible amount of space. There are plenty of shelves that fold, slide, and can be removed to store smaller items and bulky items. There are two large produce and fruit drawers that can easily be set to different humidity levels. I have found that these work really well. We use one on less humidity for fruits and the other on higher humidity for vegetables.

The freezer also has plenty of space. It is designed well with a top sliding drawer and a larger lower drawer that are divided into a couple areas. It's easy to arrange frozen foods based on what needs to be easily accessible.

Finally the controls and the look of the fridge are great. Its easy to set the exact temperature you want on the fridge and freezer. The temperatures hold well. Also, there is a nice alarm feature that will alert you if a door didn't close all the way. The look of the fridge is a major plus as we constantly get compliments on it.

The only annoying thing is that it does take a few days to get the ice maker set up for maximum production. After going through that process it makes plenty of ice.

I would probably give this fridge a 5 star review if it wasn't for the icemaker. It makes 32 cubes a day. The manual says it will make 4.5 lbs/day but it actually makes 1.2 lbs and Samsung technical support says that's normal and their's nothing wrong with it. If you don't really need the ice production, it's a beautiful fridge that otherwise works well.

I have had this refrigerator for just over 6 months, and have had 6 service calls on it already, with 3 parts replaced and still no luck fixing the problem. The left side of the freezer is completely covered in ice/frost. Sears customer service and consumer resolution department have been a joke to work with. They have suggested I write a letter and send it to the corporate office since they can't fix the problem. The phone tech suggested - I must be opening the drawer incorrectly. Well the only way to open the drawer is to pull it straight out- so exactly how can you mess that up? I had a GE Profile that worked perfectly - I should have never switched it out! This purchase has been a huge headache and mistake - don't make the same one I did!

We went from a side by side to this big boy and really really like it. Tons more room. The layout is nice. We have not had any issues with ice and we go thru quite a bit here in Texas in the summer. It makes a little noise when it drops ice but nothing that is annoying. The digital control panel is easy to figure out. The LED lighting is also a nice touch.

Received a defective unit. Lost $600 in food on the second day of use.

I have been on the phone with Samsung's Executive Response Team for 1 week non stop.... they sell Samsung at my local Lowes but they do not have any Samsung Authorized Service in my area... so I am out of luck.

I was on hold for hours every day for a week [excluding Saturday and Sunday]. One day I called 100 times and every line was busy the entire afternoon. I could not reach Samsung until the following day.

When I escalated to a Supervisor after many long phone calls , ... the Supervisor was very rude, even arrogant. All she could offer was that I email the President of Samsung.

Samsung sells products and perhaps will service them under warranty...but only if they have a service center near your address. If not, no warranty repair!

Imagine a $2699.00 refrigerator that does not work when new out of the box... but Samsung will not repair the refrigerator under warranty.

Samsung states that the only way I can get this brand new Samsung refrigerator working is if I pay a repairman out of pocket...and no, Samsung will not reimburse me.

I know this sounds incredible....but that is literally how bad the Samsung warranty service is in my location.

I really liked Samsung.... but not after this experience.

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Update: I contacted the Office of the President at Samsung. While they were polite, they literally will not do anything to fix or replace this unit under warranty. The most Samsung can offer is to return the unit for a refund and buy a different refrigerator .... and this will be a very costly. This will also leave me with no refrigerator in my kitchen for weeks, or some other equally unacceptable result.

Hard to believe that all I am asking for is a new Samsung refrigerator that works ...and Samsung will not repair or replace a 1 day old refrigerator under warranty.

The retailer is also trying to help, but after 9 days...still no solution.

Buyer Beware.

We have owned this model for one year and we have had nothing but problems with the icemaker and refrigerant leaks. Service from Samsung is poor at best and for a refer that cost this much we expected better.

You should look elsewhere and stay away from Samsung .

Update January 2012:

Evaporator replaced and no more leaks for now. Samsung service is terrible.

I have to pile on, this is one of the worst appliances I've ever owned. I too have had untold problems with the icemaker, I just finished cleaning the umteenth mess of ice off the kitchen floor due to the chute clogging and piling ice inside the door, with no way to keep it from spilling all over when you open the door. Of course, the cube/crushed option didn't work from day one. Two of the bins have broken on the inside, with hours of calling trying to find a replacement, we actually bought an extra when we finally found someone who could fine a part number for them just to avoid having to deal with Samsung again. The freezer stopped working at one point, no local repair man would touch it because they said it was too hard to get parts from Sansung. I bought the thing at Lowes, they refer me to Samsung, who refers me to Lowes. I finally got SEARS to come out and repair it, some faulty circuit board. As mentioned in other reviews, the filters are a joke and impossible to find.

Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.