SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20220629-9AB2E-2147355326. Severity: Injury, Seen by Medical Professional. Product: Samsung RF28JBEDBSR (Samsung French Door Refrigerator with center flex drawer and bottom freezer. Stainless Steel. Purchased May 2017, delivered in July 2017. Installed in around May 2018 (new build).). Incident: I purchased a Samsung French Door refrigerator in 2017 for a new build. It was installed a year later. In 2020, the icemaker stopped working properly, freezing up solid and requiring us to make attempts to break apart the ice to get it to start working again. After contacting Samsung, I was told that because it was out of warranty I'd have to pay for its repair. After many calls to different appliance companies to find a repair service, Samsung arranged for one to come from an hour away and I paid $270 for the repair on June 19, 2020. In May 2022, I noticed the refrigerator icemaker seemed to be getting worse again, making slushy ice and sometimes a bit of water would come first. This had been gradual so I believe it started much earlier, though it we accepted the "wetter" ice. But by May, there was an occasional louder fan noise that it was inconsistent. I began to look for more information online and found out that this was a known issue with these refrigerators going back to 2006 and two related repair/service bulletins were issued through 2017 and 2018. I also learned from other consumers that this was accompanied by swings in temperature. I believe this is from the compressor working overtime likely from the fan freezing over from the icemaker. I began to check my refrigerator's temperature on a regular basis, moving an analog freezer thermometer that I keep in a large freezer in the garage to my Samsung kitchen fridge. While the door settings showed it should be 37F in the fridge and 0F in the freezer, it was instead reading at between 22-26 degrees in the fridge and