I bought this Maytag MSD2554VEY refrigerator from Pacific Sales in Carlsbad about a year ago. The day it arrived it didn't work, as in no refrigeration. After about 10 days of waiting for service technicians and parts it was finally fixed. Within about 6 months, one of the pop-in shelf units in the fridge side began to break. This was clearly an issue of manufacturer defect as the upper portion of the shelf began to separate from the lower portion it was glued to. I neglected to call Pacific Sales immediately because I assumed they were going to stand behind their product, and after all, I paid for their recommended 5-year warranty. I mainly paid for the warranty since Maytag's reputation for refrigerators has not been very good in the past.

At this point about 15 months has passed since I bought the fridge; their store coverage expires at 12 months. Pacific Sales - Carlsbad refused to back me at all on this and punted the problem to the 3rd party warranty company (whom Pacific Sales endorsed and marketed). The warranty company, of course, has an "out" on this one as the small print apparently excludes shelves and drawers. After getting the Heisman from the warranty company, I called back to Pacific Sales to give them an opportunity to fix this before I started complaining. The store manager basically said "How is it our, or Maytag's responsibility that your shelf wasn't assembled correctly?"

So here I am telling you two things:

1. Maytag earned it's reputation for selling low-quality and unreliable refrigerators. Despite aggressive marketing to the contrary, nothing has improved with Maytag's product since the cemented their poor reputation in the last decade.

2. Beware of Pacific Sales. They're selling the same useless warranties as many of their low-budget competitors and play the "Who, what, me?" game as soon as you need them. I thought they were cut from a better cloth when I bought from them, but they're no better than Sears, Home Depot, etc.