I was at Trible's inc.(appliance parts) today in need of a defrost element and termination stat for a 7 year old Crosley refrigerator for a rental home.Sales guy looks up part 63001387 and tells me it's No longer available.I said ,It states Maytag on the sticker!!He says tough luck but lets see what I can piece together.The experienced fella put together a generic defrost element and stat for 30 bucks and I was OK with that .As I was leaving ,I stopped and asked, Who else is cutting off parts and support that I should stay away from when buying a used appliance for a rental home??He say's LG and Samsung are becoming impossible for parts and support.Since he does this every day & I have dealt with him for years ,I thought I'd pass the info forward.
I came across that too, when I was researching new washing machines. A woman had a Samsung that was just outside of the two year warranty period. The machine broke down - a problem with the drum. The machine was classed as a write-off, as the drum assembly was obsolete! An absolute nonsense.
The refrigerators that Duke is referencing were the ones Maytag had made by Daewoo starting about 2003/2004. We've had to make a defrost element for these quite a few times. Once WP bought Maytag these parts became NLA. That, and Daewoo had $$$$ problems.