Warranty coverage on secondhand chest freezer

I bought a Holiday 5 cu ft chest freezer in July from someone advertising on craigslist to use as a fermentation vessel. I'm not sure why but this week it stopped working. There is no indicator light on this unit but when it is receiving power it is completely silent and not cooling. The plug is working for other things plugged into it.

The freezer was originally purchased from Lowes in January of 2013 (I got the receipt with the freezer along with the manual) and it is still under the one year warranty period but I am not sure if I will be covered as a secondhand purchaser.

I know I could just call Lowes, and I will call them, but I wanted to ask here first in case anyone had done this previously and had advice for when I make that call.

A lot of the time you dont really have a manufacturers warranty unless you send in the registration paperwork.

That said if you have the receipt its entirely possible that Lowes may take it back. I just wouldnt mention that you didnt buy it And if pressed say it was a gift or something.

Worst case they take it back and give you in store credit if you have the receipt.

Lowe's is awesome and stupid all at once. They will likely welcome the return. I've seen people come in with used dirty lawn mowers after the season was over and they took them back. In fact, I got my mower for cheap because it was on the floor, used and returned. I asked the guy what happened to it and he said it was brought in DOA (that clearly didn't mean what he thought it meant) and they couldn't find anything wrong with it. the assumption on my part was the load of grass where the blades were was a clear sign it was not DOA. The fact that it has worked now for nearly 3 years is a sign that it was a "seasonal" purchase that Lowe's took back.

I say call them and get it handled.

Plus, don't tell them you had a temperature controller on it. That would surely void any warranty. It was used a freezer and went kablooey.

Thanks for the tips. If anyone else has more please keep them coming. I'll report back on what Lowes tells me.

Update: I wussed out wrt to Lowes. I had modified the freezer lid somewhat to work with my thick collar and I didn't think that would go over too well with Lowes warranty service people.

I did however take a chance and order a replacement part thermostat for that model of Haier freezer since the Holiday brand sold at Lowes are just rebranded Haier models which have the exact same model numbers thankfully.

It was a tight job getting the replacement thermostat probe into the freezer well but I finally got it hooked up right and thank goodness the freezer fired up right away when I plugged it in. The replacement part was only $12 plus $7 shipping so I got off pretty cheaply.

Awesome. Sometimes being an honest person sucks. But, I'm glad to see this time it worked out for the better. Good Job!!

That's pretty inexpensive for a replacement thermostat. I had a free mini fridge from a neighbor with a thermostat that was pretty well shot. I searched for a direct replacement and couldn't find anything for less than about $50. So I hard wired in an STC1000 and now I have more control over it than before.

I'm glad you got it taken care of. Nice work.

MrFoodScientist said:

That's pretty inexpensive for a replacement thermostat. I had a free mini fridge from a neighbor with a thermostat that was pretty well shot. I searched for a direct replacement and couldn't find anything for less than about $50. So I hard wired in an STC1000 and now I have more control over it than before.

I'm glad you got it taken care of. Nice work.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I had actually bought an STC 1000 I intended to use for something else and briefly considered installing it in my freezer as a possible fix but when I found that the replacement thermostat was only ~$12 (plus $7 shipping) I decided to give that a try first. Lucky for me that fixed my problem.

http://www.repairclinic.com/PartDetail/Temperature-Control-Thermostat/RF7350123/1224591