So, I know this thread is older and you've already made your purchase a while back, but we had some refrigerator adventures when we bought our new house last October so I read through this entire thread and decided to share my story.
When we were in the negotiation phase of the home purchase we asked for the existing fridge. It was a french door fridge with the bottom freezer. It was a GE Profile which matched all the other appliances in the kitchen. Our new home was renovated along with an addition added on in 2017 so the appliances were all 7 years old. Dishwasher, range, and microwave hood all looked brand new and were in great shape. They agreed to leave the fridge but did say that "it had a problem and they were quoted $600 for the fix, but then it started working again." It didn't seem like a big deal since we were already planning on getting a new fridge and putting that one in the garage. It turned out to be the first indication of how "frugal" they turned out to be in several ways (different story) but ended up biting them in the butt and working out well for us.
Existing fridge was french door with bottom freezer but didn't have the middle drawer and the wife REQUIRED a middle drawer style so that's why it was going to be a garage fridge and wife insisted on getting a middle drawer version.
Well, before the sales process was complete, the existing fridge ^^^^^ crapped out completely. lol. So, they offered to buy an interim fridge of "similar style" and since it would be cheaper they would give us a $500 credit. We agreed because there were much larger fish to fry in the whole closing process (new roof, two hurricanes, and more inspections and RE-INSPECTIONS than you can imagine all in a 2 week period that included our closing date) that we ended up having to deal with so we figured they'd get some used fridge, but since we were going to put it in the garage we didn't fight it since we had other battles to choose instead.
In the meantime, we shopped and I went crazy with all the research. Reading this thread was funny because it was the exact same experience I went through as well, even down to the fuzzy findings, so ultimately I just defaulted to the GE Profile so it would match our other appliances and as far as I could tell, GE was reviewed as a pretty decent buy. Plus, we found the one we wanted on sale at Lowe's for Labor Day which I scooped up and scheduled for delivery early November to coincide with closing and taking ownership of the house. $4200 fridge for $2200, so I felt pretty good about that.
My favorite features of the fridge are the water being in a removable pitcher in the door with a spigot on it (ice maker in the bottom drawer), as well as the full LED backlit wall.
Oh, also enjoy the door in the door feature, as well.
So, we finally get into the new house and we discover that they DIDN'T get a used fridge and in fact purchased a brand new GE Profile side by side. It's the cheapest GE Profile fridge available, but was brand spanking new and even though we really don't like the side by side style, it's perfect for a garage fridge. It was still a $2400 fridge, AND we got a $500 credit which with our sales price on the new fridge meant we really only spent $1700 for it. It even still had blue tape on the shelves inside of it. So, the lesson here is a $600 repair would have been a much better way to go, in hindsight for the previous owners. lol
My plan was to have the delivery guys for the new kitchen fridge move the side by side to the garage for us. Well, when the delivery guys showed up and pulled the fridge from the wall they saw that the water line coming from the wall was copper, and even though it was already hooked up to a line on the fridge "they weren't allowed to touch it." I even said to just unhook the plastic line from the bottom of the fridge and hook it up to the new fridge and you don't even have to touch the copper. Nope, they wouldn't even touch it. So, I had them leave the new fridge in the garage in the box. We had contractors coming the next day to do a week of work on the house before we actually moved our furniture in so I decided I would just have them do the install. Even with that hiccup, we were still coming out on top with both our garage fridge AND our kitchen fridge being brand new all for $1700, essentially.
That's when the adventure began. lol. Turns out we should have measured as this new fridge was HUGE and we had an island that didn't move. Didn't end up having to take off the doors, only the handles, but it was a very tight squeeze getting it in there.
And, for the first time in my life I finally have a real deal garage fridge.
So far have loved both fridges and they seem to be of a nice build quality. Time will tell on longevity and reliability but I'm happy we got the GE Profile even just because it matches our other appliances. lol. Might be a stupid way to pick one, but it's something that makes my brain happy.
