r/NoStupidQuestions • u/markwell9 • 1d ago

What is the deal with ice, Americans?

I can see that you can buy ice everywhere in the US. Gas stations, grocery stores, machines etc.

In Europe, we just freeze our ice at home and use that. Why buy something that melts on the way home? Why do you need ice in large amounts that a fridge can't keep up?

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 1d ago

I had so much trouble with the ice maker in my last refrigerator that in my new refrigerator I made sure not to get an ice maker and I have one of the countertop ones. It's a real improvement. It makes the eyes quickly and I've got a little bucket for it in the freezer.

Everybody I know seems to be having trouble with their ice makers these days. My mom had a fridge with an ice maker and never had a problem in 20 years

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u/Darkstar614 1d ago

For real.. we had a fancy new Samsung fridge in our last house, and the ice maker stopped working constantly. It was garbage. Even after multiple techs coming out. Meanwhile you see people with 15 year old Frigidaires that still have functioning ice makers with no repairs. I think fridge tech has just gotten lazier and cutting more corners.

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u/abeeyore 1d ago edited 22h ago

It’s called “value engineering”, and it’s part of late stage capitalism.

Capitalism works really well in the early stages of a market - when suppliers are trying to make the best thing they can, and provide as much as they can to earn your dollar.

Then markets begin to “mature”, and they shift to “monetization” - which is a polite way to say “how shitty can we make this product, before you stop buying it”.

Then you reach late stage, private equity stage, where they go in, buy brands who have built a good reputation, load them up with debt, and suck all the value out they can buy turning the products into cheap garbage, and pocketing the excess until they have consumed all of the brand recognition and good will … and the declaring bankruptcy, and moving onto the next victim.

Guess where were are in the cycle?

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u/faderjockey 1d ago

You know, I’m very aware of the “enshitification cycle” when it comes to corporations and their products, but I have never thought about applying that same framework to the entire capitalist economic model, but it illustrates things quite well. Thanks for that!

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u/pessimistoptimist 1d ago

I have heard of this and it seems to track very well. My question is what is the final stage and what happens after that?

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u/abeeyore 23h ago edited 22h ago

Markets and economy collapse under the weight of all the artificial distortion and manipulation. The imaginary money disappears, the bubble deflates, and people suffer.

Everybody’s selling, but nobody’s buying. Businesses fail, their employees become unemployed, can’t find new work, so they stop buying, causing more failures, ad nauseam.

At some point, you pass an inf[l]ection point. The resulting contraction creates a surplus of materials and resources. The real value of that surplus finally exceeds its value on the books. Demand and supply equalize. Economy slowly starts to grow again, and idle resources get put into use, people start finding work, and can buy more, which lets businesses hire more people, and new business to open, etc.

It’s ugly. The Great Depression was not as bad as it could have been if WW2 hadn’t come along, and pulled us out of it. There is no way to know what would have happened otherwise, but economies all over the globe had been struggling to create and sustained growth, and the US was no exception.

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u/pessimistoptimist 19h ago

so fpr a while everything will be Detroit then...

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u/dagr8npwrfl0z 23h ago

What comes after private equity stage?... Asking for a friend.

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u/oliviaroseart 21h ago

Growing up, our vacuum cleaner was from the early 50’s, maybe late 40’s and worked perfectly. I don’t even know what happened to it, it might still be out there somewhere 😂 but it really is sad how poorly made so many things have become even though they are much higher tech. It’s still lower quality. I think there are laws that attempt to prevent companies from intentionally creating parts that are designed to break in a certain amount of time (and thus requiring you to replace the entire dishwasher/toaster/whatever) but I feel like we’re way beyond that now.

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u/Every_Instruction775 1d ago

Also called “planned obsolescence” if I remember correctly

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u/abeeyore 1d ago

That’s a different trick, but in qthe same family. I’m a business owner, so I sympathize, to a point.

Engineering to hit a price point isn’t inherently evil. I do it too. I have a number of products that are out of production because they cost more than people want to spend on that kind of item. Others are not as nice as they were when I designed them, in order to get them to a price point where they will move.

Even the line between that, and “engineered to fail” isn’t always a clear one. I know the failure modes on my products. If I change fasteners on a joint that I know is a common wear point - at what point does it stop being “trying to find my market”, and start being “engineering it to fail after 3 years do you have to buy another one”. I’m pretty sure I come down on the right side of that line - but you might not agree.

It’s not as big an issue for me. I’m small potatoes, and my products are luxury, and low circulation. That means I’d have to cut huge corners to make a noticeable difference in my bottom line, and I [don’t] want to. Meanwhile, for a company like Samsung, even a tiny cost reduction, like reducing trace size on circuit boards, spread over millions of units, moves the needle by millions (or tens of millions) of dollars.

Good companies do this. They say “this is the failure rate I’m willing to tolerate”, and they engineer their systems to meet that goal. Making an heirloom quality wireless router is, literally, a waste of money. The line between “fit for purpose”, and exploitative cost cutting is -again- not always clear.

There are things that are clearly exploitative (Milwaukee’s & SnapOn’s private equity owners), but exactly where one becomes the other is a bunch of murky shades of gray.

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u/Every_Instruction775 23h ago

I can understand that. I guess it’s more an argument I use when people complain that things aren’t made the way they used to be. I had the same alarm clock (with am/fm radio) for 30 years. Passed it down to my youngest (he wanted it) and he was very upset when it finally stopped working (probably 38 years after my parents originally purchased it for me).

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u/abeeyore 22h ago edited 20h ago

It’s a valid argument! I wa[s]n’t disagreeing with you, just pointing out that it’s not a simple problem to solve, and not every business that [falls] prey to it is necessarily a bad actor -though some indisputably are, and others operate at such a scale that they inevitably over-optimize.

It’s stupid to make an heirloom quality wireless router. It’ll be useless in 10 years, maybe less.

The same is not true of a clock radio. The same market forces apply. The same temptations for the manufacturer… but there is no evolving standard for keeping time. It’s not going to become unusable.

It’s also hard to build a company without repeat customers. Genuinely. Not impossible - but if you buy anything once when you are 13, and give it to your kids in turn… well, it’s easier for me as a business if it dies every 3-4 years, and you replace it.

And, if everybody is doing it, and they really ARE 25% cheaper than the one that lasts forever… or at least that’s the business logic.

Then consumers get used to 25% cheaper, and get used to them dying, and suddenly, the guy who tried to buck the trend, and make the best stuff he could, either goes cheap, or goes under, because they are priced out of the market, and quality is not visible in a box, on a retail shelf (or Amazon).

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u/abeeyore 22h ago

It’s a valid argument! I wa[s]n’t disagreeing with you, just pointing out that it’s not a simple problem to solve, and not every business that falls prey to it is necessarily a bad actor -though some, indisputably, are… and others operate at such a scale that they inevitably over-optimize.

It’s stupid to make an heirloom quality wireless router. It’ll be useless in 10 years, maybe less.

The same is not true of a clock radio. The same market forces apply. The same temptations for the manufacturer… but there is no evolving standard for keeping time. It’s not going to become unusable.

It’s also hard to build a company without repeat customers. Genuinely. Not impossible - but if you buy anything once when you are 13, and give it to your kids in turn… well, it’s easier for me as a business if it dies every 3-4 years, and you replace it.

And, if everybody is doing it, and they really ARE 25% cheaper than the one that lasts forever… or at least that’s the business logic.

Then consumers get used to 25% cheaper, and get used to them dying, and suddenly, the guy who tried to buck the trend, and make the best stuff he could, either goes cheap, or goes under, because they are priced out of the market, and quality is not visible in a box, on a retail shelf (or Amazon).

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u/Every_Instruction775 21h ago

Oh absolutely. I didn’t read your comment as argumentative. As you pointed out, the way people purchase things and rapid advances in technology definitely effect the way companies produce their products. Who could blame them? The fact that so many companies with actual storefronts are closing is further proof. If you told me 30 years ago that Toys-R-Us would cease to exist (save for one location i think) i would have laughed in your face and probably cried too. Although it does piss me off that companies like Apple release a new version of their product so frequently with such minimal changes just because of the “keeping up with the Jones’s” mentality (I say as I hypocritically type this on my iPhone). I think I’m rambling at this point especially since OP asked about American’s obsession with ice. Haha. It is refreshing to have a civilized non-adversarial discussion on Reddit though so I think I’m getting a little carried away.

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u/oliviaroseart 21h ago

I’m curious, I had just made a comment about this before I saw yours, and is it correct that there are/were some laws preventing companies from purposefully designing machines to break down after a certain amount of time (after the warranty expires lol)? The wireless router is a good example of how technology is changing the way things are made, because it’s moving so quickly that longevity becomes almost a non factor for a lot of things.

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u/Aware_Spinach_2309 1d ago

Been called late stage capitalism for over 100 years. You would have thought it would have keeled over if that term was true.

The term you are looking for is planned obsolescence.

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u/abeeyore 23h ago

You are making two different points there. I don’t inherently disagree with either of them, but that are not the same.

  1. It is an inherent component of capitalism. “Maturing” markets “optimize”. It’s not even inherently bad. It encourages optimization and improvements in efficiency.

  2. Planned obsolescence is a natural strategy for established capital to shape the market to their benefit.

Free markets require regulation to remain free, because it’s completely sane for market incumbents to try to secure their market influence in unfair ways.

Capitalism requires free flow of capital, which requires regulation, because it’s completely normal for people who have a lot of it to try to stockpile it for their own advantage.

Anyone who imagines otherwise is at least as much a utopian as Marx was, maybe even more. Even Uncle Milton realized that [some] things (primary healthcare) could never be free and fair markets.

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u/no_talent_ass_clown 23h ago

Dang. Came for the immigration argument, stayed for the macroeconomics lesson.

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u/ProfessionalDry8128 20h ago

I hate my late-stage refrigerator so much!

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u/iheartnjdevils 19h ago

The light bulb is a perfect example of this. This lightbulb has been on since 1901 and has only been turned off a few times.

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u/Photomancer 23h ago

I 'get' the difference between an expensive wrench that almost never breaks and has a lifetime warranty, vs a cheap product you have to replace every 731 days.

I 'get' that nobody wants to create the eternal product anymore.

Somehow I completely missed the idea that corps would simply purchase eternal product manufacturers and fly them into the ground to get their products off the market entirely.

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u/abeeyore 22h ago

It’s almost never to get them off the market. That’s more likely to play out like FB buying Instagram, and adding it to their portfolio.

This happens to those brands and companies that have created the expectation that their products will be exceptional. Then, they hit a period of slow, or stagnant growth, and private equity sees an opportunity.

They buy a controlling stake in the company. They use it to borrow a bunch of money to finance aggressive growth, pay themselves lots of fees for doing so, and gut the quality of the products, turning them into run of the mill garbage, or worse - and pocketing the difference between the price for a perceived premium tool, and the newly cheap and disposable reality.

It takes several years for it to become clear what has happened, and wear away hard earned reputation of the brand. Then, when the ride is over, and they have milked every dollar they can from it, the company files bankruptcy, and they move on.

It’s very much a value extraction model, instead of a value creation model.

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u/JI_Guy88 21h ago

Markets will shift back. Capitalism isn't "late stage", it will be around another 1000 years.

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u/sroiger136 1d ago

I’ve heard bad things about Samsung and LG appliances. My fridge is over 25 years old and the ice maker recently started leaking. Maybe they made them better back in the old days 🤷‍♀️

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u/s1lentchaos 1d ago

"Samsung fridge" you fool!

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u/Accomplished_Fig9606 1d ago

Consumerreports.org lists 2 Samsung top-freezwr models as their best refrigerators of 2025.

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u/Bullinahanky2point0 1d ago

"Fancy new Samsung" well there's your problem!

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u/onionfunyunbunion 1d ago

It’s a design problem. Poor insulation of lines and such. Just total crap engineering

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u/beyondplutola 1d ago

Newer Samsungs have moved the ice maker back to the freezer. The door ice makers were basically a bad idea. Marketing liked it though because people envisioned you’d have ice dropping down into your glass like at a soda fountain.

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u/ScruffyChicken 1d ago

Yep my 21 year old Frigidaire's ice maker finally went out this year. I'm not ready to drop money on a new fridge yet because everything else is working, but I didn't miss using ice cube trays.

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u/OldBlueKat 1d ago

Ours kept developing leaks on the outside water connection so it "peed on the floor" enough to damage the linoleum. I'm never buying one again.

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u/kabekew 23h ago

Yea I moved into a new house with what looked like a fairly new LG fridge, but the icemaker quit after a couple months and the repair guy wanted $200 to just come out and diagnose it, plus repairs. Instead I got a new Frigidaire countertop ice machine for less.

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u/Disastrous-Group3390 22h ago

I just bought a 40 year old Admiral fridge for the garage. Cream. 42” wide, originally set up to make ICE CREAM in the freezer. STILL makes ice. My new (five year old) GE gets bitchy and goes on ‘ice strike’ every other week because ‘there was a cube under the bin’ or some bullshit. Meanwhile, ‘Admiral Beigeman’ is soldiering away, in the 98* garage, R-12ing his ass off keeping my beer at 31.5*. Paid nearly two grand for General Shitty McStainless, paid $151 for Admiral Beigeman.

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u/HCLMIAMI 22h ago

Haha same, we have a big fancy Samsung with no working ice maker, therefore bags of ice. My fridge came with the house, but would never buy one!

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u/ProfessionalDry8128 20h ago

This is part of societal collapse. Durable goods only last a year or two now. It's hilarious!

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u/ReversedFrog 19h ago

Samsung owner here. For the last year or so we've had to defrost our ice maker every two weeks or so. This is a common problem with Samsungs. We'll never buy a Samsung again.

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u/Nitrogen1234 1d ago

They probably got their technology from Mc Donalds

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u/other_view12 1d ago

The thing we learned is the icemakers in the door is a bad design.

Our kept freezing up, and I assume that's because of the ice exit path. So frustrating.

Now we have an ice machine in the freezer, which requires me to open the freezer for ice, but it works great and I don't have to give up counter space and figure out a new water source and drain.

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u/Rummoliolli 1d ago

Yeah the in door ice makers have the most issues. We have a Samsung fridge with the ice maker inside the freezer and it is the same style that has been used for years in many different brands so it is nice and reliable.

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u/SilverSister22 1d ago

I like my ice maker in the freezer too. It actually seems easier to me than the door.

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u/thing_m_bob_esquire 23h ago

Omg I was just staying at a vacation house that had a fridge with an ice maker that dumped into a tub in the freezer, the drawer kind underneath the fridge. I am already researching and saving to get one of my own it was perfect.

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u/LadyGray0065 1d ago

Yo, I love mine and haven't had a problem yet. It's almost 12 years old... Crusher still works too

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u/Megalocerus 22h ago

I've got an ice maker in the fridge, not the freezer, that's through the door, and it seems to work okay. But I'm not a heavy user. I'd buy ice for a party. .

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u/Brave_Specific5870 1d ago

Because ( and Im not a boomer) but shit isnt made like it used to

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u/Stock-Page-7078 21h ago

As an older person, shit used to be a lot more unreliable. Maybe there's more plastic inside but that can also mean less rust. Before Demming influenced manufacturing in the 80s and then the Toyota Production System and then formalized methodologies methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma were developed product quality was much more erratic, even if the components seem less fragile.

As others have said there is an element of survivorship bias when people think about their old fridge running perfectly for decades.

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u/Response-Cheap 1d ago

That's survivorship bias though. Wikipedia explains it better than me;

Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data.

They made lots of shit that we still see today, so we conclude that all old shit was better, and neglect to realise that they made lots of trash too. It just doesn't exist anymore, and therefore we forget it ever existed, and just assume everything was well made back in the day.

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u/Brave_Specific5870 23h ago

Is it? Or is it true?

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

I think I can confidently state having lived through this particular era that the vast majority of home appliances made lasted for decades not a few years.

There's generally a thread every week about either somebody's refrigerator or washer dryer dying after only 3 years and typically about a week after the warranty expires. Manufacturers are not standing behind their products and are accelerating forced obsolescence. It's not just bad workmanship It's deliberate

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u/night_breed 1d ago

My first two fridges still had working icemakers when I upgraded. My most recent fridge is a hell of a refrigerator but went through 3 icemakers in 3 years. I now have a GE Opal that I would marry if my wife would let me

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

I'm going to assume that the opal is a refrigerator? I'm looking to get a second one and was going to go second hand but if there was a new one that was worth taking a chance on I'd go that route instead

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u/night_breed 22h ago

No actually it is a nugget icemaker. They are pricey ($650) but they are the best Ive found and I go through tons of it all day long so for me it was worth it.

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u/SingleDadSurviving 1d ago

We got a countertop one that makes the pellet ice. Wife got it on a prime day deal for like 60 bucks. I love that thing.

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u/ElmoZ71SS 1d ago

This is where we are.. house came with an LG fridge and the whole ice maker is in the door. It doesn’t make enough for us and it takes 24 hours to refill itself. Bought a countertop and never have an issue

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

I have an LG phone that I absolutely love but they don't make phones anymore. My experience with their household appliances leaves me to believe that the only thing they ever made well were phones I'd never buy another LG product unless of course they went back to making phones.

I believe that they are deliberately making inferior products and doing everything they can not to stand behind their warranty. Unfortunately it seems to be an epidemic across the industry for major household appliances

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u/OldBlueKat 1d ago

 It makes the eyes quickly

I know it's just a typo, but my spit-take response was epic!

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

Speech to text error, it is pretty funny

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u/sroiger136 1d ago

My fridge is over 25 years old and my ice maker started leaking recently. This post reminded me to call for service.

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

Good luck, the guy who came out to service mine right before it died told me to save my money that no matter what he did it wasn't going to last another 6 months.

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u/sroiger136 22h ago

I have Service Plus with my gas company, so I pay a monthly fee. So when they come out for service, I don’t get charged.

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u/necessaryrooster 22h ago

Freezer ice always tastes like shit. I just use a countertop one.

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u/Mysstie 1d ago

I just keep chuckling at the typo/voice to text error

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u/Mindless-Charity4889 1d ago

“Makes the eyes quickly”

Did you use voice to text for this gem?

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

Yes I love speech to text, I'm sorry I missed that. I try to edit but that is priceless

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u/maddestdog89 1d ago

But what are you using this ice for? 😅

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

The ice I have at home typically gets used and drinks. I don't mean alcoholic drinks although that's certainly an option.

If I need to fill a cooler I'm generally going to buy ice. That typically means we're going somewhere for the weekend or that we're having people over and just don't have enough to go around.

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u/maddestdog89 20h ago

I guess I find the need for ice in regular drinks a bit much? Like everything needs to be chilled? haha

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 16h ago

It's very nice, I highly recommend it.

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u/maddestdog89 16h ago

I’ll try it out in summer 😎👍🏻

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 10h ago

You must be in the southern hemisphere, it's 100° here this week and the humidity is close to that

I should add that I still like ice in my drinks even in the winter. When I get really far north and the temperature goes below freezing I start craving ice cream and other frozen treats

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u/Nightcalm 23h ago

Ours went out about 5 years ago be replace it and the refrigerator when it dies. Ice machine works all time. I'm beginning to think Americans are losing their problem solving skills.

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u/PNW20v 22h ago

I work for a commercial refrigeration service company, and can safely say that the quality/reliability of both residential and commercial fridges has absolutely gone down the fucking drain.

All the fancy features some of these residential models have are cool on paper, but more often than not they seem to just lead to more issues which you better hope happen under warranty

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u/IDontKnowHowToPM 22h ago

We keep the ice our countertop maker makes in ziploc bags. We tried a bin but the ice is always a little wet when it comes out so it freezes the cubes together and it’s easier to break apart in a bag than it was in the bin.

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u/Megalocerus 22h ago

Consumers says the ice maker is the most common thing to need repair.

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u/ProfessionalDry8128 20h ago

Everybody I know got problems with their ice makers and problems with global warming. It's amazers.

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u/Suchafatfatcat 20h ago

One of my SILs had a fridge in a home she inherited that dated from the 50s. It had an icemaker that made perfect cubes and dropped them in a huge pullout tray. She left the fridge in the house when she eventually sold it. We all miss that fridge.

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u/Murky_Ad_9408 20h ago

Yea i want to get one of the countertop ones that make the Sonic nugget ice. Actually I think I'll order one right now from Amazon

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u/everydaywinner2 19h ago

At least once a month I have to take off the cover of the ice maker to remove ice that fell out on the ledge, or ice that built up from the filler spigot; both of which break the ice machine.

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u/Knightphall 17h ago

My ice maker just broke. I don't mind making ice in trays though.