Over the weekend my Beko fridge freezer (frost free) packed up. It was working fine Friday, we put bread in it and within a few hours it was frozen solid. Monday the wife did a large shop, put the items into the freezer. On the evening when she was preparing tea she noticed the new bread she'd put in wasn't frozen. We put a thermometer in and it has show the freezer at -4 deg C.
We called an engineer out (as the unit is 18 months old and outside the manufacturers guarantee) and he said it was low on gas. He said the compressor was OK. I didn't agree with him at the time as I said this suddenly went during the weekend and a loss of refrigerant would have lead to a gradual loss in performance ie the compressor would be running longer and it taking longer to freeze things due to the machine running less efficiently due to having less refrigerant. I said for it to fail as quickly as it had done, something would have had to fail (crack pipe etc as it WAS working fine on Friday) pretty quickly to lose the gas and not the pin hole leak he claimed. I said that therefore regassing would be a waste of time.
Anyway, guess what - he charged us £25 for call out plus another £15 to fit a valve plus £60 to re gas the unit, and surprise surprise, it didn't work. So we now have no working freezer and are £100 out of pocket for the privilege. He now says the compressor has failed (even though he said it was working fine when he tested it yesterday) due to the extra work the unit was now doing now that the extra gas had been added. He says this isn't his fault and we now need to go and buy another unit. (This diagnosis was carried out over the phone - he's coming back at 1pm today for a second look)
Am I being ripped off. I paid him to diagnose and repair it. It isn't repaired so am I entitled to my money back? As to the more technically minded amongst you am I being fed something male cows leave behind in fields? Symptoms are - machine appears to work, compressor runs, it just doesn't get cold. As this is a frost free unit could it be stuck in the defrost cycle, are there any other fans inside (other than the one I can see) that could have failed?
Thanx in advance for any help.
We called an engineer out (as the unit is 18 months old and outside the manufacturers guarantee) and he said it was low on gas. He said the compressor was OK. I didn't agree with him at the time as I said this suddenly went during the weekend and a loss of refrigerant would have lead to a gradual loss in performance ie the compressor would be running longer and it taking longer to freeze things due to the machine running less efficiently due to having less refrigerant. I said for it to fail as quickly as it had done, something would have had to fail (crack pipe etc as it WAS working fine on Friday) pretty quickly to lose the gas and not the pin hole leak he claimed. I said that therefore regassing would be a waste of time.
Anyway, guess what - he charged us £25 for call out plus another £15 to fit a valve plus £60 to re gas the unit, and surprise surprise, it didn't work. So we now have no working freezer and are £100 out of pocket for the privilege. He now says the compressor has failed (even though he said it was working fine when he tested it yesterday) due to the extra work the unit was now doing now that the extra gas had been added. He says this isn't his fault and we now need to go and buy another unit. (This diagnosis was carried out over the phone - he's coming back at 1pm today for a second look)
Am I being ripped off. I paid him to diagnose and repair it. It isn't repaired so am I entitled to my money back? As to the more technically minded amongst you am I being fed something male cows leave behind in fields? Symptoms are - machine appears to work, compressor runs, it just doesn't get cold. As this is a frost free unit could it be stuck in the defrost cycle, are there any other fans inside (other than the one I can see) that could have failed?
Thanx in advance for any help.