Never buy a Ge refrigerator: Update even worse then I knew

[Bill Dufour]

I posted about one year ago warning that ge fridges use a custom chipped water filter that shuts down when they think it has done enough. Aftermarket makers do not have the chip and will not work. Ge wants over $50 for a filter. I bought some from ebay but genuine factory made.
I had to replace the filter today. It could not read the chip in 3 of 4 I tried. I doubt ge will replace them with good filters. So one working filter costs about $80 -400 once a year!
Bill D.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Samsung charges about $35 per filter. It takes 2 per year. I don't know these filters have chips.

[Zachary Hoyt]

It sounds frustrating for sure. Maybe the ones on eBay were being sold because the previous buyer couldn't make them work either. I've never lived with a fridge that dispensed water, we just put it in plastic pitchers and set them inside the fridge when we want cold water. I think modern life has some conveniences that are more trouble than they're worth, but I've always had odd notions.

[John Ziebron]

If you have a reverse osmosis system you can "T" that in to your fridge and bypass the filter. Some fridges automatically bypass the filter if it's not installed and others generally make a dummy filter available. Even if you don't have an RO system now you can buy one for about $150 so your recap wouldn't take very long.

[Bill Dufour]

Less then one year old so I will have ge pay to repair it. I want to log in the failure before the warranty expires. I bet they will not want to replace it.
Bill D.

AFAIK Only ge chips their filters.

[Bill Dufour]

If you have a reverse osmosis system you can "T" that in to your fridge and bypass the filter. Some fridges automatically bypass the filter if it's not installed and others generally make a dummy filter available. Even if you don't have an RO system now you can buy one for about $150 so your recap wouldn't take very long.
You can not bypass the filter that easy. I do have a filter bypass plug that may or may not have a working chip. If that chip is bad the valves do not work, no cold water, and no ice maker either.
Bill D.

[Michael Schuch]

With that kind of robbery, I agree, I won't!

Are all new refrigerators like this?

[Ole Anderson]

I presume my 8 YO Whirlpool has a similar filter. When it comes time for a change, I just hit the reset button. It seems to go by amount filtered without regard to water quality. I buy a new filter every 3 or 4 resets.

[William Fretwell]

The Maytag we have uses a $75 filter, at least we can re-set it with a push of a button. Water minerals vary a lot, 3 months is too short! It also has an air filter to change and re-set. There is a water drain filter buried in the back to clean or the floor gets wet.
Millions of fridges, even at 2 filters a year $100 x millions is a lot of profit.

[Andrew More]

Honestly, the design is flawed to begin with. You bought a box that's supposed to get cold, and stay cold, with a leaky HOLE IN THE SIDE. :) The pitcher approach is so much better, if a little less flashy.

Not that that excuses the highway robbery of the stupid, unnecessary chip.

[ChrisA Edwards]

My JennAir(Whirlpool) has something similar, but I find if I go through the motion of changing it, it thinks it has a new filter, I.e. I remove the old one and put it back in.

I replace it every second time. It seems to work more in a timer than actual water flow.

We have whole house filtration,

[Roger Feeley]

Our Liebherr fridge doesn’t much care if it has a filter but I have one. We have an inside ice maker and no water dispenser so it really doesn’t use much water.

The ice maker has been replaced 4 times in the five years we’ve had the fridge. It was always covered under the original and then extended warranty. I got kind of tired with the local company’s poor diagnostic prowess so I got on the phone with liebherr. I managed to develop a working relationship with one senior tech which has helped a lot. At his direction, different tech is coming today (on Liebherr’s nickel) to take a crack at it. This was nice of them. I’m off warranty.

[Stan Calow]

I too push the reset button a few times before replacing. I always assumed that the "replace filter" alert was triggered by the amount of time since last replacement, not by any real measurement of capacity or amount of sediment trapped. If the chip was actually measuring something, resetting or taking it out and putting it back shouldn't work.

[Frank Pratt]

I'm grateful for threads like this. It's easy to make a purchase & later find out that they've sneakily engineered in a future revenue stream. But then any GE appliance has been off my list for a long time.

[Bruce Wrenn]

It's not just refrigerators, but almost everything. Toyota proposed a subscription service to keep the remote start function active. Jeep is currently being sued because their collision avoidance system is only an option. A Jeep rear ended a car, which the system most likely would have prevented.

[Ron Citerone]

I am philisophically opposed to ice makers, water on a fridge door, and oh yeah............................garbage disposals!

Besides, the ice makers I've seen don't make those big round bourbon cubes anyway!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

With that kind of robbery, I agree, I won't!

Are all new refrigerators like this?

It appears that any refrigerators with ice makers and cold water have a replaceable filter. For the Samsung we have, you can buy non-Samsung replacements. You can also just reset the filter "clock" and continue to use the same filter.

[Bruce Page]

It appears that any refrigerators with ice makers and cold water have a replaceable filter. For the Samsung we have, you can buy non-Samsung replacements. You can also just reset the filter "clock" and continue to use the same filter.

Our Kitchen-Aid can also be reset. I will reset the "clock" once and replace the filter on the second notice. I buy a 3-pack of filters from Amazon for $27.

[Barry McFadden]

Maybe we are fortunate up here but we get cold drinking water right out of the tap.

[Ron Citerone]

Maybe we are fortunate up here but we get cold drinking water right out of the tap.

Barry, we were in Banf some years back and in our rental was Tom Horton coffee. I felt it was some of the best coffee I have had. Came home, bought some in a can as well as in the little cups. Not so great. I suspect it was the water up there more than the coffee.

[John Goodin]

I have two GE appliances and there will never be a third. The sound of the refrigerator makes me think it has a diesel engine.

[Frank Pratt]

Barry, we were in Banf some years back and in our rental was Tom Horton coffee. I felt it was some of the best coffee I have had. Came home, bought some in a can as well as in the little cups. Not so great. I suspect it was the water up there more than the coffee.

Banff and Calgary, which is downstream, have always had excellent water. When I was a kid, before moving here, we always used to look forward to visiting my sister in Calgary because of the great water. Well, we did like visiting my sister too.

My icemaker doesn't have a filter because it just isn't needed. Some place sure do though.

[Kev Williams]

Funny (?) that a company that builds this kind of stuff can't seem to get a refrigerator right ;)

475652

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475651

[Gary Ragatz]

Funny (?) that a company that builds this kind of stuff can't seem to get a refrigerator right ;)



GE doesn't make GE appliances anymore - they sold that business to Haier five or six years ago. They don't make GE light bulbs anymore, either.

[Jerome Stanek]

Never make coffee with water from the fridge that hasn't been used in 6 weeks. Guess how I found out. We had to go to Vagas for a show and the one truck driver made coffee from the filtered water that had not been used for at least 6 weeks and 4 of us that drank it had the runs. I ended up making the coffee from then on.

[Ronald Blue]

Our LG has a water and air filter but I buy after market filters. It can be reset also without changing.

[Bill Dufour]

On this ge there is only one way to reset the filter counter. That is to insert a filter with a different serial number on it's onboard chip. try it with the old filter and it knows that one is expired and will not allow water to flow. I would think it is like printer ink cartridges and I could cycle 3-4 filters through and it would not remember that many serial numbers.
The problem is it can not read the chip so it thinks there is no filter attached.
Bill D

[Rollie Meyers]

GE doesn't make GE appliances anymore - they sold that business to Haier five or six years ago. They don't make GE light bulbs anymore, either.


They sold their electrical products to ABB, also. Haier is so bad that any day beyond the warranty expiration date is a bonus day, I will not buy anything from a ChiCom owned company, Lenovo is another.

ABB also owns Baldor, & T&B.

[Curt Harms]

I too push the reset button a few times before replacing. I always assumed that the "replace filter" alert was triggered by the amount of time since last replacement, not by any real measurement of capacity or amount of sediment trapped. If the chip was actually measuring something, resetting or taking it out and putting it back shouldn't work.

I wonder if whoever came up with that idea used to work for HP in their inkjet cartridge department.

[Jeff Heil]

How long past expiration does the filter still work? Ours is at 24 days and counting on our 6 month old GE fridge. Every time I get ice it shows the number of days past expiration (I assume its set to 6 months). We have a whole house filter so I am not concerned about the fridge water filter. I might just take the door apart and put some black electric tape inside over the display.

[Jerome Stanek]

I wonder if whoever came up with that idea used to work for HP in their inkjet cartridge department.

Not only their ink jet but some laser printers also I got tired of their high prices in laser cartridges and the stupid chips that tell you you have to replace them when they are nearly new. There for a while I was getting new chips to install on my old cartridges so I didn't have to buy new ones. I now have a Dell all in one that doesn't have chips.

[Kev Williams]

bonus offtopic sidetrack:

Everyone with decent tasting tap water has water to make perfect coffee, but it takes a wee bit of effort:

fill a large pan with water, put a lid on it loosely to keep the dust out, let it sit for a day or two, then make your coffee-

the 'letting it sit' allows the chlorine in the water to gas-off. Works good for just plain drinking water too :)

I suppose boiling may work ;)

[Bruce Wrenn]

bonus offtopic sidetrack:

Everyone with decent tasting tap water has water to make perfect coffee, but it takes a wee bit of effort:

fill a large pan with water, put a lid on it loosely to keep the dust out, let it sit for a day or two, then make your coffee-

the 'letting it sit' allows the chlorine in the water to gas-off. Works good for just plain drinking water too :)

I suppose boiling may work ;)


Have a well, so no chlorine. Can't stand the taste of "city water."

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Oh heck, I have an old HP laser printer. I have been using much cheaper generic laser cartridges for about 4 years now. Well the chips in the cartridges and the last update from HP screwed me. I put in another brand new off brand laser cartridge and suddenly the printer beeps and flashes non-HP product and promptly stopped working. I tried the other cartridges I had on hand. none worked. Went and bought a factory cartridge and the dam machine blinked a different message, but still won't work. Yeah the darn things have chips in them. We tried the old way to get around the HP chip. That doesn't work anymore. My computer geek buddy is trying to figure out how to undo the last update

[Myk Rian]

Have a well, so no chlorine. Can't stand the taste of "city water."

Same here. City water tastes terrible. We have an iron filter right off the well head. Great tasting water.

We solved the refrig filter problem so many seem to have. Wife just bought a refrig without a water hookup.

[Rick Potter]

My son's house in Texas has the best well water I have tasted. Makes sense, he lives in Springtown. They bottle spring water in a nearby town.