If the compressor in your refrigerator sounds like this, then you just won a no-expenses paid trip to your appliance dealer to shop for a brand new refrigerator!

The cause of the noise is probably one of the mounting springs inside the hermetic compressor. But, as the name implies, these compressors are hermetically sealed at the factory and are non-serviceable.

Oh, sure, you could pay to have the compressor replaced by a Master Appliantologist who specializes in this repair but that’ll run you $300 minimum. That’s why for most home refrigerators, a bad compressor or a leaking sealed system is a terminal event unless you have one o’ them high-dollah refrigerators, like a Sub-Zero, where you paid so much for it that you’re married to it.

“Hey, what about the warranty?”

Yeah, what warranty? A long, long time ago, in a land far, far away, home refrigerators came with a five-year sealed system and compressor warranty. But that’s back when the present day country of Ameedeeka was known as “America,” a nation that had a sense of purpose, identity, pride in workmanship, and actually made stuff– you know, “land of the free and home of the brave” kind of a deal. Nowadays, Ameedeeka is a burnt out, decadent nation that bullies and threatens other nations around the globe, including its own citizens, it gropes its citizens’ genitals at airports, murders 51 million unborn babies and calls it a “right” and it doesn’t make anything that anyone wants to buy; it’s become the “land of the freeloaders and home of the depraved.”

It used to be that you could expect to have at least a five-year parts only extended warranty on sealed system repairs. In today’s refrigerators, most often made in Mexico or China, very seldom if ever do you get any more than the standard full one-year parts and labor warranty.

A few of the high end brands such as Sub-Zero still have the extended 10-12 year warranty on the sealed system. But the prices for these units are out of reach for most people.