Should I get another fridge with an ice dispenser on the door??

[PrincessMommy]

I'm looking to replace the side-by-side that came with our new house with a French Door fridge.   I love having a water dispenser on the outside of the door, but they only come paired with an ice dispenser.   We've never had an ice dispenser that lasted more than a few years.  Should I risk it again?  Or just go with the water dispenser on the inside?  I'm looking at a Whirlpool French Door fridge.   All the reviews are pretty new (less than a year) so it's hard to tell how well it holds up.

 

 

[Lanny]

This was years ago, but when I was looking at new refrigerators, the salesman told me something like, "if you do not have an ice maker, you will probably never have a problem"    Since you wrote that you love having a Water Dispenser on the outside of the door, I would probably go for that and possibly spend extra $ on an Extended Warranty, which I normally would not recommend anyone buy, if the Extended Warranty covers the Water Dispenser and Ice Maker 100%   We have 2 low end Whirlpool refrigerators, but neither of them have those upscale features so we have no experience on the reliability of them.  

[kewb]

No ice maker.  They break.  They flood your basement.  They are nothing but heartache.  If you don't have one your fridge will last longer.

[fairfarmhand]

We have hard water and the dispenser on th front of my fridge constantly looks cruddy and crusty. When I have to replace it i want one with an ice maker but not a water dispenser. Mine is 16 years old and never had a problem with any of it except the ice dispenser doesn’t work properly. The ice maker is fine you just have to get it out of the freezer.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AngieW in Texas]

Our fridge is now 16 years old with ice and water dispenser on the door. I absolutely plan to always have an ice and water dispenser on the door.

 

The problems we've had with our fridge were with the temperature control and auto defrost machinery. We had a repair guy here every couple of months for a full year until he finally ended up replacing all of the circuity for it and we haven't had any problems since then. That was about 10 years ago.

 

 

[Annie G]

I've never had an ice maker or water dispenser in my fridge ever cause a problem. They were convenient when we had young kids who couldn't reach the ice in the freezer or turn on the kitchen faucet. Now that we're all adults it's not really a big deal. 

[Okra]

Nope. Ice makers in a French door fridge take up WAY too much room in the fridge where we need the room the most.

[Ali in OR]

Having easy access to ice cold water is important to me. It's practically the only thing I drink and I refill my water bottle several times a day. So having ice/water in the door is a feature I look for. We went from a side-by-side to a French door, both with ice/water in the door, and the difference in how much space there was in the fridge was huge just changing styles of fridge. With the French door style, there is plenty of room even with an ice maker. And the drawer freezer holds so much more too. Our Samsung is over 4 years old now--no problems yet.

[Ellie]

It's hard to buy a bottom-freezer fridge without ice and water on the door. :-( Our Amana is almost 20 years old; when we bought it, water/ice on the door was rare, and we've never missed it.  All of the fridges we've looked at to replace this one when it dies that have the features we like also have water/ice on the door, so I guess we'll be stuck.

[Carol in Cal.]

I don't want to give up the space, plus ice makers are noisy at random times, plus I prefer bottled water.

 

So I have a pretty good sized glass pitcher that fits in the fridge door--it's a Blenco from Chinaberry, and it's a splurge but I am such a water girl that I decided to go for it.  I fill it with *good* water, and it's always cold; plus the bottle is deeply dimpled so it doesn't tend to fall out of your hand.