Same way in most 'repair' companies.   Very few replace components as such, now it's board assemblies or the entire item.  Finding good techs with experience is very difficult.  The OG's (old guys) are retiring or worse and the new kids coming in don't have a clue.

I just saw this post, and wish I had earlier.  I am a Sears appliance TECHNICIAN,and I have been with them 28 years as of August. ( I will be 46 in October, so this has been my career )  Unfortunately over the years,things in our company have changed a lot. I still however try and repair things, vs replace. That being said, most things are becoming component level, and are replace only.  I have heard, and read stories like this, and honestly it pisses me off. I would still like to think there are a few of us that give a crap about the customer.  Sorry to hear that the company let you down. If you PM me, I can give you some info, and some phone numbers.  For the record, Sears has never made anything. Its all from major companies with our name. Whirlpool made most of our appliances up til about 2004 when LG started providing a better " deal " . GE made some fridges from 88 to around 02, but more where produced by  Whirlpool. Now Samsung is in market, and between them, and LG, those are the major producers of our items. As you mentioned, there are some Frigidaire models, but not as many as the others. None of the appliances are made very well anymore. I do mostly refrigeration now, and I work on a ton of newer 1-3 yr old models.

Thanks for the post, Brian. PM sent.

The saga continues on the Kenmore fridge that I had issues with last year...

I'll try to make this short.  Ha!

Last month I was doing some house cleaning (I'm retired but my wife still works so I clean the house) and I decided to pull the above mentioned fridge away from the wall and clean behind and under it. This was the first time that this had been done since the repair in June that I told ya'll about in the above posts. After I pulled the fridge out and took a look behind it I was floored! The entire back of the fridge was wet from condensation and covered with black mold, as was the wall the fridge was up against! I took a bunch of pics and cleaned up the mess as best I could, the wall will have to be repainted. I called Sears appliance repair services as the fridge was still under warranty and told them what was going on. They said that they'll send a tech out to have a look.

The tech showed up a week later (the fridge is/was still operable) and after taking a look pronounced the fridge unrepairable. He said that the reason that it was all wet was from condensation from lack of insulation inside of the back of the fridge. I asked him why now since we purchased the fridge back on 12/12 why didn't it do this before? He didn't know and it doesn't matter because if the fridge is deemed unrepairable it gets replaced under the terms of the warranty.

That was the first week of January and I knew that I was going to be traveling down a rough road in order to get this thing replaced. I was right. After about 10 total hours of telephone hold time, after being shuffled from one department to another, after talking with several people who's first language was most definitely not English, and after sending the pics to Sears SEVERAL times (they claimed that the pics weren't received and then received but lost... You get the picture here?). I even threatened to contact my lawyer to see what he could do.

They finally got approval to replace the fridge with a like model. Sears placed $1,900 (I paid $1,500 for the original fridge) in my account and told me to go shopping. I did and our new Samsung fridge is being delivered on Saturday.   

I'm sure that Sears uses this MO with everyone. They try to make it as hard as possible to get a warranty claim and hope that the people just give up. If you Google Sears Master Protection Agreement you'll see what I'm talking about.

Samsung?....didn't I read somewhere they were catching fire?

Samsung?....didn't I read somewhere they were catching fire?

Fire? At least that will keep the mold at bay.

It was flame on for their cell phones, G.

Don't forget the exploding washing machines.