AEG Fridge Freezer S83600CMW0 Fan Problem

[JamesK]

Hi All,
Around June last year I had smart meters installed which required the power to the house to be turned off for approximately 1 hour. A few hours after the power returned the freezer started beeping with a low temperature alert. This was surprising as the freezer hadn't been opened. It took nearly two weeks for AEG to get an engineer out. With a 3 month old baby in the house and a freezer drawer full of frozen expressed milk, my wife was furious. AEG simply didn't care.
When he arrived he said the problem was the fan in the freezer was iced up. He duly removed a cover on the back wall of the freezer (B in attached picture) pointed a hair dryer upwards and it thawed out the fan enough to start it spinning again. He showed me how you could put your hand up behind the cover and feel if the fan blades were turning freely (roughly where arrow is in picture). Apparently it wasn't possible to remove the cover at the top of the freezer (A in picture) to get to the fan directly. He said that because the fan was jammed the unit couldn't run its defrost cycle properly. I was recommended to leave the freezer off for 48 hours to allow it to properly de-ice. He didn't really give me an explanation as to what had caused the issue in the first place. I felt that a 1 hour power cut shouldn't be enough to cause a problem.
All was fine until two weeks ago when the power had to be cut for several hours. Again the freezer door wasn't opened. When the power returned, I looked in the freezer to find lots of ice had formed on the top cover, and again the fan wasn't running. Having remembered what the engineer did, I used a hairdryer to free up the fan, and a LOT of ice subsequently melted. As a result the freezer powered back up and the fan was running.
Two weeks later, without any power cut I came home tonight and noticed the fan wasn't running again. So had to go through the hairdryer routine to fix it.
As a result of our fury with AEG's service we cancelled the service agreement on the unit a few weeks after the issue was resolved last year.
Can anyone shed any light as to why the fan unit keeps icing up?
Are we better off to write the unit off and get a replacement? This was a £900 fridge freezer when we got it in 2012. I know nothing lasts for ever, but I'm not sure it's worth spending that kind of money if it isn't going to last any longer than a cheaper unit.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated... Many Thanks.

 

[jj4091]

I'm no AEG expert but it sounds to me like the fan is poorly designed & not really up to the job & freezing up too easily probably because of it's location, plus if he went to it straight away it sounds like it might be a common fault that AEG are aware of. It might be worth asking a local independent engineer if they have any knowledge of it or it might be worth asking AEG if there is an upgraded fan that could be fitted. Given your comment about their lack care though I have my doubts they will be very helpful. In my experience more expensive just means more features & therefore more complicated & more to go wrong. The only other thing I noticed was that the user manual states there is a drain hole that has to be cleaned out regularly with the special tool provided, have you done this? https://www.aeg.co.uk/support/download-manuals/?q=S83600CMW0

 

[JamesK]

Yes, drain hole definitely clear. The engineer commented that the top cover A cannot be removed, and the components fitted behind it cannot be replaced (the fan being one of them). He said the parts are fitted during assembly, certain areas of the unit are then sealed, and that’s it. Hence why cover A cannot be removed.
He managed to replace the fan blades as he could reach up behind the cover and swap them over. He carried out tests on other components such as the heater and said they were working.
When the unit went wrong AEG were absolutely horrendous. They outsource their extended warranty to D&G. When it became clear it was going to take them more than a week to get an engineer out, and the situation with our baby, the D&G official recommendation was “Why don’t you go out and buy a beer fridge?”. AEG UK weren’t remotely interested in helping out when I raised it with them direct. Their response was “this appliance hasn’t gone wrong once in the previous 5 years, so we aren’t going to do anything”.

 

[jj4091]

Well it seems the engineer lied to you, as fans are available for replacement as a spare part https://www.ransomspares.co.uk/diagram/aeg/fridges-freezers/576988/s83600cmw0 (92503382904)/ item 18 but it looks like it would be a horrible job & he could not be bothered

I am not sure if this helps any & whether you should just bite the bullet & put it down to experience or you want to pursue it further.

 

[JamesK]

Casting my mind back to the whole sorry saga, when I placed the initial service call I was told my fridge/freezer was so advanced it required a specialist refrigeration engineer. It turned out that the engineer in my area was on holiday, and they had no cover, so had to get someone from another area to attend. When he turned up he didn't spend too long looking at it, but ordered a load of parts and went away. That included a fan, new PCB, heater and some other bits.
Those parts took over a week to arrive as they had to come from a planet called "Italy". The engineer who came to fit them was the normal guy for my area, who'd visited me before. He told me the parts ordered, while correct, were also used in other AEG appliances. However, in this appliance it simply wasn't possible to replace the fan assembly or heater. He did replace the fan blades, and he also changed over the PCB. Looking at cover A, it does indeed look impossible to remove from inside the freezer compartment. He also showed me proof from his multimeter that components like the heater were working correctly, and didn't need to be replaced.
I guess these appliances are not designed to be maintained after production. Quite possibly he could also have been lying and couldn't be bothered to pull the machine to bits.
I'm really not sure I want another fight with AEG/Service Force as it was pretty horrendous last year when I was covered by extended warranty.
Any recommendations on good products to replace with?