Appliance
LG freezers
LG does not sell a standalone upright freezer in this country — its freezers are the compartment: the bottom drawer of a French door, the bottom of a bottom-freezer cabinet, the tall left side of a side-by-side, or the top of a top-freezer. That is worth saying plainly, because it decides what a failure means. A freezer that is not holding on an LG is a refrigerator failure with its own published codes — FF for the freezer fan, FS for the freezer sensor, dS for the defrost sensor — and the compartment beside it is usually the evidence.
- 4 symptoms we are called out to
- From $95 diagnostic, credited to the repair
- 59 cities and neighborhoods covered
- OEM parts available on order
The short version
What this equipment is, for a repair
Configurations
The freezer side of a French door, a bottom freezer or a side-by-side
Access
Planned before the visit, not discovered on arrival
Parts
OEM, available on order
Diagnostic
From $95, credited to the repair
What goes wrong with it
Symptoms we are called out to on LG freezers
Each one covers the likely causes in the order they are worth checking, and what to do in five minutes before booking anything.
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The lights are on and the food is warm Refrigerator not cooling
The most common call on this badge, and the first check is free. An LG refrigerator has a showroom mode that lights the whole panel, runs the fans and cools nothing at all, and it gets switched on at home by accident often enough that we ask about it on the phone before anything else.
- Demo mode looks exactly like a broken refrigerator and clears in ten seconds
- Three separate fan codes, and the usual cause of all three is ice rather than a dead motor
- The sealed system is last, and it is measured rather than assumed
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One compartment is right and the other is not Fridge warm and freezer cold
The combination that rules more out than it rules in. On most LG cabinets one cooling system feeds both compartments and a damper divides the cold between them, so a freezer that is still hard proves the compressor, the gas and the condenser are all doing their job — and moves the whole question to how the cold is getting from one side to the other.
- A hard freezer proves the sealed system is fine, which removes the expensive answer
- Air, damper, or the fan feeding the fresh food side
- On a two-evaporator cabinet, the code prefix says which coil is involved
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Soft packets, and water in the bottom basket Freezer not freezing
On this make the freezer is a compartment rather than a separate machine, which changes the diagnosis in a useful way: the compartment beside it is a live instrument. A freezer that is failing while the fresh food side holds is telling you something quite different from both of them drifting together, and LG's own codes carry that distinction in their prefix.
- The refrigerator compartment beside it is the most useful measurement you have
- FF, FS and dS are published and each names a different part
- A drawer that will not close on a packet is a real and common cause
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A white wall behind the back panel Frost building up in the freezer
Frost inside a freezer is not a cosmetic problem and it does not stay a small one. A modern cabinet is supposed to melt its own coil clear every few hours; when it stops doing that, the ice grows across the airway until the compartment above it starts to fail. This is the slow failure that people live with for a month and then call about in a hurry.
- A frost-free cabinet with frost has a defrost problem, by definition
- dS is the sensor half of the circuit; the heater is measured rather than read
- Do not chip at it — the coil is aluminum and the tubing is thin
What we do on it
Repairs we carry out on LG freezers
Starting figures for this equipment in South Florida. The exact cost is confirmed after an on-site diagnostic — and this is not the whole list of what can go wrong, so call if your problem is not here.
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from $95 Diagnostic visit
One visit, one technician, one answer in writing. On this make the diagnostic starts with something most makes cannot offer: the appliance usually has something to say. LG publishes code lists for its refrigerators, dishwashers, washers, dryers and ranges, and on the machines with no display it publishes what the blinking lights mean instead. Reading that properly is half the job and it costs nothing to do.
- The model number and whatever the appliance is reporting, read before anything is opened
- Blinking-light patterns included, because LG documents them and that makes them codes
- Written findings and a from-price before any part is ordered
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from $125 Appliance maintenance
The visit that stops the other visits. Most of what fails on an LG in this city fails because of something that could have been cleaned: a condenser packed with dust, a dishwasher filter nobody has taken out, a dryer duct that has been closing for three years. None of it is glamorous and all of it is cheaper than the repair it prevents.
- Condenser, filters, seals, drains and levels on whatever you have
- Written findings, so you know what is aging before it fails
- Priced on time rather than per appliance
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from $145 Appliance installation
Delivery is not installation. A machine that has been put in place is level, connected, tested, and standing with the clearances its manufacturer specifies — and on LG's ventless laundry and its built-in cooking there are specifics that get missed often enough to be worth naming.
- Leveled and tested, not just connected and left
- Clearances checked, because a built-in with no vent path fails in August
- Gas connections leak-tested and documented
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from $155 Refrigerator not cooling repair
The most common repair on this badge and the one where the order of work matters most. Air first, then defrost, then the sealed system — a sequence that goes from free to expensive and that anybody quoting a compressor over the phone has skipped two thirds of.
- Demo mode and blocked vents are ruled out before anything is opened
- LG publishes three separate fan codes and the usual cause of all three is ice
- The sealed system is measured with gauges, never assumed
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from $175 Defrost system repair
The slow failure that takes three weeks to show and then takes the whole cabinet. A refrigerator melts its own evaporator clear every few hours; when that stops, ice grows across the airway until the compartment above it can no longer be fed. LG publishes dS for the sensor half of the circuit and the rest is measured.
- Heater, sensor and control — three parts, one circuit
- The cabinet is defrosted properly first, which is time before any part
- Frost on the back wall is this, not the fan and not the gas
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from $165 Evaporator fan repair
LG puts a sensor on its fans, so a blocked or stopped blade is reported rather than left for you to work out from a warm compartment. Three of them are named separately — CF in the machine room, FF in the freezer, rF on the fresh food side — and in this climate the usual cause of all three is ice rather than a dead motor.
- Three fans, three codes, three different access routes
- Ice is the cause more often than the motor, and that changes the repair
- The compartment has to be emptied and often thawed first
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from $125 Condenser cleaning service
The cheapest thing on this list and the one that prevents the most expensive. The condenser is the coil that throws the heat away, and in a coastal kitchen it fills with dust, hair and salt air until the compressor is working against a blanket. LG codes the fan over it as CF; nothing codes the coil itself, which is why it goes unnoticed for years.
- Coil, fan and machine room, properly rather than a brush at the front
- Nothing reports a dirty coil — it is found by looking
- It lowers the running temperature, the noise and the bill
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from $115 Water dispenser and filter service
The cheapest refrigeration row on this site and the one most often mistaken for something larger. Between the mains and the glass there is a valve, a filter, a tank on some models, a line, and a dispenser switch — and any of them will produce no water, slow water, or a leak that gets blamed on the defrost drain.
- Filter, housing, tank, line and valve, in that order
- A cartridge a few millimeters proud weeps steadily and is missed for months
- Air in the line after a change is normal and clears itself
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from $145 Door seal replacement
Nine wet months a year is hard on a gasket, and a cabinet fighting its own door runs constantly and still loses. The part is not expensive; the fitting is fussy, because a gasket that is not seated evenly all the way round is worse than the tired one it replaced.
- A paper test finds it in thirty seconds and most people never do one
- It is behind a great many cooling, frost and ice complaints
- Fitting evenly is the job — the part is the easy half
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from $155 Temperature sensor replacement
LG publishes four separate sensor codes on its refrigerators — FS for the freezer, rS for the fresh food side, dS for the defrost coil and rT for the room — and they are not all in the same place. A cabinet that has lost one still cools; it simply cannot aim, which is why this arrives as a machine that swings rather than one that has stopped.
- Four sensors, four codes, four different locations
- A cabinet with a bad sensor will happily freeze the fresh food side
- Small part, contained job, and worth doing promptly
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from $595 Sealed system repair
Real, uncommon, and last. It is the only refrigeration repair that needs gauges, recovery, brazing and a vacuum, and it is the only one where the number is large. On this make there is a second reason to be careful before it is quoted: LG's linear compressors carry a long parts warranty that follows the machine rather than the owner.
- Diagnosed with gauges, never from a symptom or a code
- The compressor warranty position is established before any figure is given
- Recovery, drier, vacuum and charge — the whole procedure or none of it
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from $145 Refrigerator leak repair
Water arrives from two places on this appliance and they are entirely different repairs. Melt water that should have gone down a drain, or supply water from the line that feeds the dispenser and the ice maker. Where the puddle is decides which, and the diagnosis comes before the quote.
- Under the crisper is the defrost drain; at the back is the supply
- A cracked drain pan leaves a trail rather than a puddle
- A filter housing that was not seated is the cheapest cause and the most missed
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from $285 Appliance control board repair
The board is the last thing suspected rather than the first, because supply problems imitate it perfectly: a long extension lead, a shared circuit with something heavy on it, or a socket with a poor neutral will all produce board errors on a machine that is otherwise healthy. A second board fails exactly the way the first one did.
- The supply is checked first, every time
- EE on a washer and F11 on a range are board-level codes
- A board replaced without finding what killed it is a repeat visit
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from $115 Smart diagnosis and firmware service
LG builds diagnostics into these machines that most makes do not: a connected app, a stored history, and on many models an audible diagnosis the machine plays down a phone line. When that side stops working the appliance still washes and still cools — but you lose the reporting, and on this make the reporting is worth having.
- Connectivity, firmware and the app-side diagnosis
- The machine works without it; you lose the instrumentation
- Often a network problem rather than an appliance one
In more detail
About LG freezers
Why there is no freezer model number on this page
LG's US catalog has no standalone upright or chest freezer in it. Search its own product list and the word freezer returns bottom-freezer refrigerators, top-freezer refrigerators and spare parts. So the freezer on an LG in a Miami kitchen is a compartment of a cabinet that also holds a refrigerator, and every problem in it is reported by the refrigerator's own control board with the refrigerator's own codes.
Which is good news for diagnosis
It means the compartment next door is a live instrument. A freezer that is failing while the fridge holds is telling you something different from both of them drifting together, and on the cabinets with two evaporators LG puts that difference into the code prefix itself. The three codes worth writing down are FF, the freezer fan; FS, the freezer temperature sensor; and dS, the defrost sensor, which on a two-evaporator machine arrives as F dS or r dS depending on which coil is complaining.
This article is based on:
- Official manufacturer documentation
- Internal repair procedures
- Technician repair history
- Company quality standards
Before you book
Questions about LG freezers
The freezer is soft but the fridge is fine. What does that combination say?
On a single-evaporator cabinet it is unusual and it points at air rather than cooling, because both compartments are fed from the same cold. On a two-evaporator cabinet it is exactly what a freezer-side failure looks like, and LG codes it that way: F dS is the defrost sensor on the freezer evaporator, r dS is the one on the refrigerator side, and the prefix is the whole diagnosis. Before any of that, check the obvious two — a drawer that will not close on a packet, and a vent at the back buried under food.
There is a wall of frost at the back of the freezer.
That is the defrost circuit, not the door, and it does not fix itself. The evaporator ices, the ice blocks the air path, the fan then pushes cold nowhere and the compartment above it starts to lose ground. LG publishes dS for the sensor and FF for the fan the ice eventually stops; what it does not publish a code for is a heater that has failed open, which is the other half of the same circuit and is measured rather than read off a display.
How long is the food safe if it stops?
About forty-eight hours in a full freezer with the door kept shut, and about twenty-four in a half-empty one — a full compartment is its own cold store. The single most useful thing you can do while waiting is not open it. The second is to write down the code if there is one, because a code that clears when the power is cycled and comes back an hour later is a different call from one that never comes back.
Where we do it
Across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach
Same terms everywhere we go: an on-site diagnostic first, the price agreed in writing, and the exact figure confirmed once we have seen the unit.
Neighborhoods people ask for by name