The Samsung Arrives

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men…. “ (Robert Burns).  I finally got tired of all the recalls of our Norcold refrigerator.  I was also becoming concerned by reports of fires caused by the failure of the cooling unit. There has been four or five recalls one on top of the next. Their fix appears to be installing a shut off which turn the unit off in the event of a catastrophic meltdown and hopefully before it starts a fire.
Several people have kept their Norcold but replaced the cooling unit, the source of the problem, with a much better one made by an Amish company . Others have replaced the Norcold with a residential refrigerator. Mostly with  a small Samsung, and that’s what I decided to do. It cost about the same to replace the cooling unit as buying and installing the Samsung.  A new Norcold would cost almost twice as much. The Samsung has twice the storage space.

Before leaving California I started contacting RV shops to see if we could have it  installed on our way to Port Susan. As it turned out, Roy Robinson, a Itasca dealer in Marysville, about ten minutes away from us made the most sense.

Back to the plan. First I conferred with Ken in the service department of Roy Robinson’s to go over what I wanted. I had a list of several tasks and how I though the job should be done. The Samsung is almost the same size as the Norcold but about 6 inches taller. We agreed on most of my requests and estimated the time would be 12 to 16 hours over 2 or 3 days. We set up an appointment for a month in advance.
I then ordered the refrigerator, a Samsung RF195, from ABT Electronics who had a good online reputation and price. It was scheduled to be delivered the week prior to the appointment at Roy Robinson’s.  All well and good. I checked with the trucking company frequently and followed the refrigerator from Chicago to Seattle.

The morning before delivery I checked status and was told it was scheduled for tomorrow but they didn’t have a time as yet. Fortunately I called again around four and found the delivery had been rescheduled for the day after my appointment.  Several problems. First, Roy Robinson had agreed to plug in the refrigerator for a few day just to make sure the unit was ok before installing it and if we could start the install then we wouldn’t have time to test it. Second,  Roy Robinson’s scheduling is three to four week out, so if we had to reschedule with them, the delivery would delay the install a month.  After several calls back and forth to Excel Trucking and remaining firm and polite, I was able to get the refrigerator back on schedule. I have to say, Excel has been very good with tracking and the dispatchers I talked to were also polite and helpful and in the end their effort was responsible for getting back on track.
So yesterday I went up and met the delivery.

OH GOD!!  I could not believe they were sliding my refrigerator out the side door and not using the lift at the back of the truck!


Believe it. They managed to slide it out without dropping it. Whew!!


Ok, there it is, but wait a minute, where are you guys going.  Just as I thought, although I paid for “white glove delivery” the drivers were going to just drop it and take off. Not so fast they were suppose to un-crate it and take the packaging with them. They knew it because when I mentioned it they said they didn’t know and without any argument took the packaging off and loaded it back into the truck. I couldn’t blame them for wanting to get going, knowing what the traffic back to Seattle is at 5:30 pm.


Here it is.  With the help of Shauna, we were able to get it plug in and working.

Checked it this morning and the freezer was –2 degrees and the refrigerator was 38 degrees, the defaults.  So far, so good.