Sub Zero Refrigerator Prices: Whirlpool 61005626 Water Valve for Refrigerator

My refrigerator was making ice but the water function on the front of the freezer door stopped allowing us to get water. I did some research & used a meter to find out both valves on the back of the fridge had stopped working. Each valve had 2 different sets of wire terminals, 4 total between both valves, and one of the wire terminals on each valve was faulty. This allowed the ice to continue to be produced but could not pump water to the door.

Price: (Rating 5 out of 5)

After looking locally I found prices were almost double what I found on Amazon.

Ordering/Shipping: (Rating 2 out of 5)

I ordered both valves (Maytag 12001892 & Whirlpool 61005626) from a vendor on Amazon. I passed up the opportunity to save a couple more dollars by buying them from California and instead I chose the vendor, Pandora's OEM Appliance Parts, which are located closer to Michigan hoping they would arrive to my house a little sooner w/o paying expediting fees. I ordered them over the weekend and I assumed they would process the order on Monday, but after not getting any kind of shipping confirmation I sent a message to the vendor asking for an ETA. To my surprise they said they don't ship on Mondays & it wouldn't get processed until Tuesday. After they did ship it it arrived a few day later, which was the same day that the California company estimated the delivery originally so I missed out on saving a couple dollars.

Product: (2 out of 5)

Once the product arrived, I ran into some issues and challenges I was not expecting.

The first item, 12001892, was completely not what I ordered, it was a part for a washing machine. After talking to Pandora's OEM Appliance Parts they shipped out a new one from some other supplier located a couple miles from my house that arrived the next day. They even admitted that another customer

The second item, 61005626 had THREE problems:

1) it was not an exact match to what the old valve looked like, but this was not the fault of the vendor. Whirlpool made the decision to no longer use valves that allow the water lines to thread into them and they now push into a compression fitting so this required extra work I was not expecting. With the some great help from Pandora's OEM Appliance Parts they explained what I need to do. I had to buy new tubing and a converter compression fitting.

2) After getting everything together I found out one of the compression fittings on the actual valve was broken & would not seal correctly. It was leaking water very badly! So I had to again call the supplier and have them send another one. Again the sent it from the same supplier that they knew that happened to be located a couple miles from my house. I asked if I could just go there and pick it up and they would not allow it so I had to wait another day.

3) The new valve that arrived the next day was different from what they shipped me the first time and had two different size valves. It was actually looked like the original one with the threads I was replacing but now I had to redo some of the other "extra work" I did and put in a different size water tube and add an extension of the tube with a compression fitting to make it work.

Functionality: (4 out of 5)

But after it was all done, everything worked. The next question is for how long?

Vendor/Customer Service: (2 or 3???? out of 5)

I am not sure how to rate them, this entire project was all over the place and took a lot longer then it ever should have. Pandora's OEM Appliance Parts helped me out a lot and was good at getting back to me with questions and my many concerns. They did a great job taking care of the customer and shipping the replacements over-night, but ULTIMATELY HAD THEY TAKEN THE TIME TO DO THE JOB CORRECTLY THE FIRST TIME and check the quality of the items and verify what was being shipped matched what was ordered a lot of this could have been avoided.