Maytag review: poor quality product! 29

I'm trying to get Maytag to respond to my many messages... i'm three days into having NO REFRIGERATOR! I see where others have had the same problem with theirs and maytag sent them a FREE part with FREE repair man to come out and install. I have lost food, I have food sitting around in three ice chest and am constantly having to buy ice. I can't cook for my family as I have no place to put left overs so we are eating sandwiches. Everything is disrupted at my house. My husband is disabled and we are on a fixed income, I have no money to fix my problem. Imagine how excited I was when I googled my problem and read where there were others with the same problem and Maytag recognized the problem, with or without a warranty, because its something to do with 'this' refrigerator? Yet I can't get help. I can't even get anyone to answer any of the SEVERAL emails and messages I've left. I take care of my disabled husband and my disabled daughter, I don't need this added stress. I can't afford to fix it at this point, I certainly can't go buy one, or even go to a rental center to rent one. I am just waiting to see if Maytag will have the goodness to help me with this as they have the others. french doors, ice maker on front, freezer on bottom. control panel lights were flashing on and off like a christmas tree, ice flapper was opening and closing and compresser stopped coming on. a sound coming from back that sounded like a car turning signal...and had to unplug it due to smelling a GAS TYPE SMELL coming from the back. Pretty sure its Freon coming from the compressor. So this may have caused something else to go wrong. Model number MF12568AEW

my mistake, model number is MF12568AEW. It would be really awesome if Maytag would return my MANY messages. I am very frustrated right now.

sorry...MF12568AEW is the model number. I see that the last post was made on this subject matter on 6/2012..thats been over 2 years. hope someone still follows this board and can help. After calling Maytag this morning, I wrote Maytag.Digital@maytag.com an email plus went to the Maytag website and sent them a message through their page. I'm hoping to hear something soon. My husband had a stroke and is disabled, so we're very limited on our income. I got on line yesterday and googled the problem and seen that MANY people have had this same problem. Imagine my excitement when I seen that Maytag had helped so many people. I am still holding out hope.

well, I am having the same problem as all of you. It happened yesterday, on a sunday and of course they weren't open so my husband had to call them this morning...we were told no. that there were no problems with my model and theres nothing they can do to help us? I was so hopeful after seeing all of you get free parts mailed to you and a free service person to come over and put it in, even without warranty. but they said no. any advice? mine is doing the same thing...stopped cooling...I have lost food and what I was able to save, I had to go buy ice for icechest. my life is totally disrupted right now and they say 'sorry'. the control panel keeps blinking on and off like a christmas tree and ice flapper keeps flapping. my model number is MF12568AES. they said there was no recall or anything defective. so no.

Hello Matt Allen. My name is Melanie and I am a representative of Maytag. We apologize about the frustration you have experienced with your refrigerator. If you would like us to look into this further, please provide your name, the name of the site you were contacted on (ComplaintBoard), your user ID name(Matt Allen), your phone number, your address, the full model and serial number, and email the requested information to Maytag.Digital@maytag.com. We would be happy to review your concerns further. Sincerely, Melanie.

I just experienced the same symptoms as everyone else - found this thread and took a look at the voltage board. It had the two popped capacitors as described. I decided to check with Whirlpool first and to my delight they have agreed to replace the board at no charge and also to cover the labor costs. Thanks Steve for your work - I am going to save the old board and the instructions and put them in a box in case this happens again. Cheers!

Thanks Steve. I did the repair as outlined and my frig is running great. Took longer to wait in line at radio shack than it took to repair.

Imagine that. June 5th 2011 and I wake up to play golf at 0530 for a 0700 tee off time and I find the refrigerator completely losing its mind and needing an exorcism. I’m Catholic, so I decide that the exorcism is the way to go, but its Sunday and I know no priest is available, so Google is the next best option. Of course I could just let the wife deal with unloading the frig because it’s at 58 degrees and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before the food looks like 40 day old curry, but being that our 20th anniversary was just 2 days prior, I take the high road. Low and behold, I find this threat and Steve Beck’s fix on this site. I am an engineer by background but the way Steve wrote this, it really can be fixed by anyone. Radio Shack opened at 10, home by 1015, repair done by 1045. No holy water, no crosses and no yelling in Latin required. The frig is running like a champ. I really appreciate it when I find people who do what you all did here, and what Steve did. Thanks, and I will definitely be out today providing a random act of kindness of my own.

Whirlpool is covering to fix this part and labor included. I had to call three times (3rd time is the charm). The first two people said they had no knowledge of this problem. The third guy came through and said this is a quality control issue and this will be fixed for free. Part is being mailed. I have to call back one I receive the part and they will send someone to fix it. Good luck and don’t give up calling Maytag/Whirlpool. Call them at [protected].

I now must join this group...except my ice maker simply doesn't work. I cannot hear (I used to hear all the time) the water pump coming on and filling the ice maker. But no noise and no ice. Any body out there ever have this problem?

UPDATE - Well the service tech came the next day in the afternoon as I was preparing to leave. However, the part from Maytag had not arrived yet. Thank goodness the A & E service guy immediately knew what was wrong when my service call came up so he brought a part with him. He said a few years ago he fixed a lot of Ice2O's with this particular problem, but hadn't had any calls about it in a while. It took him about 15 minutes to go onto the back of the fridge and switch out the old circuit board for a new one. I signed the receipt -BTW, the value of the free repair was $458 and some change- and after that he was on his way!

Oh, and about an hour before I had to leave for my trip, FedEx showed up with the part. I told them I didn't need it anymore and they marked the box as "refused" and took it away. I'm so glad I was able to get it fixed before I left town, although I have to admit that every now and then I wondered if it was still running okay while I was away. I just got back a couple of days ago and everything is still a-okay!

Well as of this morning I too am experiencing the flashing lights and flapping ice maker door. Mine happens everytime the compressor runs. I am sooo glad I found this website because otherwise, I wouldn't have known about this being an ongoing issue with this particular fridge.

So after reading everyone's posts, I call Maytag expecting the customer service person to say that she knew of the issue and she would get the part out to me and schedule a service call for free. Instead she told me to unplug the fridge and plug it back in to see if that would help. WHAT!? ARE YOU SERIOUS!? I told her I would not because I know for a fact that the problem with my fridge is an ongoing issue that she should know about. She also offered other words of wisdom like waiting to see if it stops cooling to determine if there is a real problem. I then explained to her that I wasn't going to wait and see if my food spoils before calling for a repair.

Long story short, she finally scheduled my service call for the next day and when I asked her about sending a part, she said that A and E Service company would handle having the part when they come to repair it. However, after remembering what I had read on this website, I figured she didn't know what she was talking about...again, and I called A and E. Just as I suspected, A and E said they would have to look at the fridge first and may or may not have a part on hand, plus Maytag did not note to them that this was a free service call. WHAT!? ARE YOU SERIOUS!?

Being that I have to go out of town in 2 days, it is super important to get this taken care of ASAP. I called Maytag again, praying that this time around I got a competent operator. Prayers answered! He said he knew of the ongoing issue and that the service call would indeed be free of charge. He then went on to tell me that he noticed that the first operator I spoke to did not ship the part to me and he would do so. He said it would take two days for the part to come. I explained to him that I would be out of town and asked if they could ship it overnight. After putting me on hold - for what I assume was him getting permission from his boss- he told me that he could overnight the part to me. Now I just hope the part comes before the service tech does.

Unlike some of the other posts, I must say we will have had our Ice2O for 3 yrs. in Sept. and we had not had any problems with it until today. I really like it and I hope this fix will be its first and last repair.

Maytag Ice2O
I've totally gone through all those problems, and guess what guys, the next thing will be that it runs and doesn't cool.A&E Factory service will not be able to get here for 3 days.
Tonight we will be eating excessively. While over the weekend, we wont have any thing at hand to prepare. Next time this thing goes out, I'm going out and buy the cheapest thing without computers on it at all. (If that's possible nowadays) Good Luck and don't stress too much. It seems that the 100 Dollar Mini- fridge in the garage is the best buy we have made Oh, and their Washers and Dryers are no Better.

I purchased my Maytag Ice2O Refrigerator in August 2007, then yesterday evening, April 14, 2009, I experienced the same problem with the flashing control panel lights and flapper valve cycling on and off. I first looked in the manual in the troubleshooting section and did not find any items that were close to describing this problem, I then called customer support this morning and they had no idea what the problem was and since my refrigerator was no longer under warranty they suggested I contact an authorized service firm. I called the service firm and was told someone would get back to me later in the day to schedule an in home service call, minimum charge $89.00. In the meantime I searched the web and found this site with other people that are experiencing this same problem. I found Steve Beck's detailed instructions (sorry, but I don't have a link to his detailed instructions, but I believe it is posted on one of his comments on this message board). Even though my soldering skill is very primitive I was able to replace the two defective capacitors and get my refrigerator working again in just one hour. I can't stress enough that you should thoroughly read Steve's instructions BEFORE you start working on your refrigerator and get help if you don't think you are up to the task. The main problem I had was removing the two capacitors from the circuit board. My soldering iron didn't seem to be hot enough to melt the solder so I could vacuum it up with the soldering bulb; therefore it was difficult to remove the capacitors and also to get a clean "hole" for the new ones. I finally was able to remove the old capacitors by carefully alternating between each wire and gently pulling the capacitor out of the board. I flipped the board over and installed the new capacitors from the "top" of the board by holding the soldering iron over the holes until the solder melted and then aligned the new wires over the holes and gently pushed the new wires through the holes in the board. I then finished soldering the connection on the back of the board. Total cost for parts $3.00 and another $20.00 for tools and finally one hour of my time. It's only been 3 hours since I finished the repair, but the refrigerator is working fine and I can get water and ice again. I'm very disappointed that Maytag didn't know about this problem since my little bit of research on the internet indicates that there are a lot of other customers with this same issue. As a side note, just before I arrived home with my $3.00 in parts I purchased at RadioShack, I got a call from the service firm and they said the earliest they could stop by was Friday (today is Wednesday); I described the problem to them and asked if they could tell me what would cause this to occur. The tech didn't know and said he hadn't heard of this issue before, I mentioned my research on the web and said it seemed like a common problem with this refrigerator and that I was going to fix it myself. He wished me luck and said he would call me back tomorrow (Thursday) to see if I needed him to still stop by. Can't wait to tell him not to bother. Thank you internet.

I recently noticed that the lights in my Maytag do not turn on. I initially noticed it and it seemed to fix itself but now the lights do not work again. The light bulbs are fine. The refrigerator is working. Ice is being produced. Freezer is fine. Does anyone have any suggestion for everything working fine but the lights will not come on?

Thank you Michelle, Julie and Carolyn for your recent posts! Also, a huge thank you to Steve Beck for the instructions. We were just getting ready to go to bed tonight when a nightmare arrived before we were sleeping! At least we were able to stop the ice door from clicking thanks to the instructions. I'll be up early to get Whirlpool on the phone for the replacement board. We also bought ours in April of 2006. Thanks again.

Thanks to all of you for posting this problem as it happened to me last night. I had called Maytag before reading this but just went the "call in for service" route and had booked an appointment. But when I found this post I called back and talked to a live person who when she heard the symptoms immediately said they would ship the part and technician would come out to repair for free. My refrigerator is also about 17 months old and of course out-of-warranty so I'm happy it's coming for free! Unfortunately have to wait a few days for the part to arrive and tech to come out. In the mean time I've stuffed a dish towel in there to keep the noise down and hopefully keep the cold air in! At least it's somewhat quieter!

I ws so happy to find this complaint board with information on this refrigerator. I'm about to lose my mind listening to the sound of that ice maker flapping! It started up this morning and won't stop! All the lights are blinking and it's getting warm inside the fridge. After numerous calls to the 1-800 number for Maytag (they kept disconnecting me!) I finally talked to a live person who said that they knew about this problem and would be happy to take care of it for me free of charge even though my refrigerator is out of warranty. (Purchased in April '06) However, the earliest they can have someone out to me is 10 days from now! What the?!?! I am beyond fuming! It's now 3pm on Saturday afternoon and I gotta figure out what to do with all my food for 10 days! I'm glad they'll take care of it without charge, but come on, 10 days?! I will never buy another maytag appliance.

Thanks for the post on calling for a free fix. I too had the flapping, flashing lights and loss of cooling. I called our warranty service (even though my appliance is 16 months old and out of warranty) When I told them the problem they just said yup..maam I hear that alot. I recieved the back voltage regulator panal free of charge in the mail the next day and the repairman came the next day, again free of charge and my high dollar fridge is back in action. Thanks so much for the info!

Hi,

For anyone who is currently experiencing this issue or will in the future I just want to say that this issue is a known issue with the manufacturer. I work for an extended service company and we noticed an a lot of customers calling with these same problems. We kept track and sent the manufacturer (Whirlpool/Maytag) this information and what they've done is they've made quality improvement to the refrigerator's control board and if you call them they will ship you a replacement control board and arrange for service to install it at no charge to you.

In order to qualify for this free repair you must be experiencing at least two of the known three issues for this model: unit not cooling, ice maker flapper opening and closing non-stop, and/or control panel lights continuously blinking on and off. If you are not experiencing at least two of these issues then you will not qualify for the free repair.

Keep in mind that usually what happens first is the ice maker door opening/closing and the control panel lights flashing and then 2-3 days later the whole unit will stop cooling. If you are experiencing at least two of these issues then call Whirlpool (they bought Maytag) and will handle the repairs. Even to this date we are still getting calls from people experiencing this problem. This is NOT a recall by the manufacturer and with my experience with talking to different repair technicians, Whirlpool has not issued any bulletins regarding this, so if you call out a technician on your own then chances are they will have no knowledge of Whirlpool handling this issue free of charge. I advise you to call Whirlpool first instead of calling out a tech on your own because that will make the process run a lot smoother than trying to get it resolved after the fact.

Just a follow up! Good news it worked great. I found this to be very easy. The 19 page PDF was worth printing out. Bottom line anyone can do this and it's true the parts only cost about $3. I would suggest buying the fancy $9 disordering tool if you are not experienced in this type of work. I struggled getting the old ones out until I went back to RS and bought the disordering to0l with built in bulb. Worked like and dream and minus drive time I only have 40mins tied up in the repair process. Thanks to Steve Beck I'm back in business.

Tom,
P.S. I didn't experience any ice maker issues after the fix like Troy did. Good luck with that Troy!

This sucks. I can't believe I let my wife talk me in to buying this over!@#$@#$% priced frig. I can't tell you how happy I am that I found your repair instructions. I will be trying them out tomorrow. Thanks in advance.

I want to say thank you to posting those directions. It resolved my flapping and panel issues and all seems to be working properly with the water and ice dispensing now. I did however run into 1 problem after the repair. I'm not sure if all that freaking out of the display or constant opening/closing of the flapper caused any other concerns but now my ice maker will no longer make any new ice. It dispenses the left over ice fine, but doesn't seem to want to refill the tray to make more.

I have turned off the ice maker, let it sit and turned it back on, but to no avail. I checked the water line and it is on and is pumping water through it. I even reseated the filter. Still no new ice.

Anyone else experience this...

Troy.

My Maytag Ice2O freaked out on Friday night late with the flap opening and closing and all the control lights flashing. I searched several appliance forums and found the great instructions that Steve Beck put together. Go to:
http://68.195.103.87:8083/liny/maytagice2o.htm. It was a very easy repair and it took less time to fix than calling the repairman, explaining the problem, and waiting for the repairman to show up! I had my refrigerator fixed 40 minutes after the local Radio Shack opened the next morning. The real problem is a pair of cheap capacitors from Nantong Jianghai Capacitor Ltd Co. Maytag made the mistake of trusting parts from a crappy supplier and not running destructive audit testing to verify part quality. Save yourself the hassle and avoid the rapairman. Any TV/stereo/electronic repair store should be able to fix the board if you are not comfortable soldering. Removing the board is very easy - just follow the step by step instructions:
http://68.195.103.87:8083/liny/maytagice2o.htm

Cheers,
David

I have an H20 that is just 13 months old. The flap for the ice maker has been flapping for the last 2 weeks. All my food is ruined because it got warm inside.
I have to replace the rear board, touch pad, and fountain board per Maytag.
This is the worst appliance that I have ever purchased and for the amount of money that I paid.

I called and wont take no for an answer because they were telling me it is out of warranty. I called enough that they are repairing it for a one time fix and gave me 6 months on a free warranty. I will now know two things don't purchase Maytag and get an appliance warranty. Hopefully my duet that is 3 years old wont break down.

My fridge is still A-OK from the repair I now have chronicled at http://liny.net/MaytagIce2O.htm. Others have also commented positive results from doing the same thing.

Exact same problem here as well. My H20 is 16 months old, luckily I purchased the extended service plan. The repairman came out today and said it was the back board that converts the 110 electricity into the 12 volts that the front panel uses? Means squat to me? He said that if Maytag can "find" the part, they will send it out right away. From reading these complaints I may be in for a good long search while they find the part...

Here's what I did to fix my Maytag Ice2O flashing lights and flapping ice door (front panel going crazy) Model MFI2568AEW (Similar for Black MFI2568AEB and Stainless MFI2568AES). I'm reasonably handy and don't mind pulling things apart when they break. If you can solder, and you are OK around tools, this is for you. It's less than $5 in parts.

I may have been lucky in that my board had just started to go, maybe yours is in the same state, or maybe not. $5 to risk vs $350+ was worth a gamble on my mind. "Your mileage may vary".

See http://liny.net/MaytagIce2O.htm for step by step what I did to fix my fridge - now the better part of a month humming without any further problem.

I have exactly the same problem.

User Reviews on Yahoo.com seem to reflect this is not an unusual issue.

Look under "Maytag Ice2O MFI2568AES Refrigerator"