I’m not sure what the answer to your question is. Frankly, you need to remember the adage: a happy customer will tell 1 person about their experience, an unhappy customer will tell 100. Many of the reviews you see online are from the latter, not the former. You have to take the reviews with a grain of salt.
For example, I recently needed to buy a SOHO backup system for my computers. I was interested in getting a Netgear ReadyNAS and TigerDirect.com had the best price. I did a quick audit of TigerDirect and found quite a few negative reviews. However, most of them were concerning rebate issues. Frankly, I don’t buy anything anymore if the rebate is the only thing that makes the price bearable. If it isn’t worth the list price sans rebate, I look elsewhere.
In any event, I went ahead and placed the order with TigerDirect and had it shipped UPS ground. Imagine my surprise when it was sitting on my doorstep the next afternoon. Will I go online to a bunch of review sites and convey this awesome experience? Probably not. However, when I had a crappy experience with Pacific Sales a few months back, I posted it on about 5 different websites. Draw your own conclusions.
Back to the question at hand…
FWIW, I have a 10 year old sears (whirlpool) side by side with an ice maker and I haven’t really had any problems with it. When I bought a dishwasher recently I also bought a whirlpool (gold).
Frankly, $1500 is not a bad price for a SS SBS fridge. I paid almost that much 10 years ago for a white one and mine is very small due to space constraints (~ 21 cu feet).
