Willow and Hearth

On Monday, September 28, a TikTok user who posts as Shannon Elizabeth (@singegneri) says she found everything in her freezer “soaking wet and warm.” She opened the refrigerator side next and, by her account, all of the food in it had spoiled.

The appliance is an LG refrigerator that she says she and her husband bought at Home Depot in 2023. In a video posted October 2 and filmed from the seat of a car, she puts the total at $2,600 and says that figure included a Home Depot Protection Plan the couple “got talked into.” The text over the video reads “DO NOT EVER BUY APPLIANCES FROM HOME DEPOT.”

Her first call went to Home Depot. “My fridge is broken. We need to figure this out,” she recalls saying, adding that she told them she had lost all of her groceries. The answer, she says, was that a claim would be filed.

Before anyone would come out, she says, the protection plan required the couple to troubleshoot the fridge themselves. As she describes it, that meant unplugging it, taking everything out and leaving the doors open for 24 hours. “We do all of that, and guess what? The fridge still does not work.”

When she called back to ask for a repair visit, she says the plan sent her somewhere else. According to her video, she was told the refrigerator was still under LG’s own warranty, so LG would handle it. “I have a Home Depot Protection Plan. So now we’re going back to the original warranty,” she says. She tells viewers that LG covers the fridge for five years and that she does not know why she was sold a plan on top of that.

LG, she says, told her it would schedule a technician and call. No call came. Her husband phoned to ask what was happening and, in her telling, learned that LG had not found a technician. The company had contacted two, she says: “One of them declined it and one of them just straight up didn’t answer.” She says LG then told them it would be 10 business days before it could even locate one.

The couple emailed Home Depot to say they would not wait 10 days and to point out that they also held the retailer’s plan. Her account of the reply: “We’re just gonna send you a reimbursement. Or we’ll send you a new fridge.” She says they were told to watch for an email within 24 hours.

That email came around 11 p.m. on October 1, she says, and asked her to call. On the call, by her account, the refund and the replacement were no longer on the table. “I know in the beginning we told you it had to be an LG tech. But we’re just gonna send one of our techs out,” she quotes the representative as saying. The earliest appointment was October 8, and she says she was told that visit would be a diagnosis only, because parts would have to be ordered, with a second appointment needed for the repair.

By her count, that put her household almost a week without a refrigerator, another week from a technician’s first look, and an unknown wait for parts after that. “Really trying hard to understand how you go from we’re gonna reimburse you or give you a new fridge, to actually, we’re just gonna try to fix it now, within 24 hours,” she says. She tagged both The Home Depot and LG in her caption. The video was posted six days before the appointment, so it does not show how the claim ended, and neither company’s side of the calls is in it.

If a Fridge Covered by Two Warranties Stops Cooling

If you bought a store plan on an appliance that also carries a manufacturer warranty, pull both documents now and write three things inside the front cover of the manual: the date the manufacturer warranty ends, the date the store plan takes over, and the phone number each one says to call first. She says she only learned on her second call that her claim belonged with LG.

On the first call, ask four questions and write down each answer with the date, the time and the representative’s name. What is the claim number? Is there a troubleshooting step I have to finish before a technician is booked? Who sends the technician, you or the manufacturer? Is spoiled food part of this claim? In her account, the 24 hour unplug step and the handoff to LG came up on separate calls.

If an unplug test is required, start it within the hour and note the start and end times. Before emptying the shelves, photograph the wet freezer and the spoiled food one shelf at a time, so there is a record of the groceries if the plan asks for one.

When a technician is promised, ask for the appointment date on that call instead of waiting for a callback, and ask what happens if no local technician accepts the job. She says LG tried two and got neither. Ask the store plan the same day whether it can send its own technician; in her account that option only appeared after she complained by email.

Get any offer of a refund or a replacement in writing before you hang up. Ask the representative to email the offer while you are still on the line, or send your own email right afterward repeating what was said, with the name and the time. Hers, she says, turned into a repair visit inside 24 hours.

When you book the visit, ask whether it is a diagnosis or a repair, and whether parts can be ordered ahead from the model number and the symptoms. Before paying for a plan at the store, ask who handles repairs during the years the manufacturer warranty is still running, and how many days the plan allows for a repair before it replaces the unit.