I had the devil of a time with my KitchenAid fridge too. Luckily, mine was covered by the warranty I bought from Sears.

KitchenAid (& JennAir) is made by Whirlpool. I feel like although it used to be a better than average brand, it's really just a Whirpool in dressy clothes. It's disheartening. If KA is crap, then what's the next step? Where do those of us in the middle go when we can't afford the luxury appliance price?

I have a Kitchen Aid stove, had it for 4 or 5 years and it's never been great. It takes forever to preheat. Although I'm remodeling the kitchen I'm going to use it till it dies off, I don't know were to go after that because I had a Frigidaire previously and that piece of crap only lasted 4 or 5 years & the micro four.
The only thing we can all do is to get on the review sites and give bad reviews for our short lived or half working products. More and more people are reading reviews before purchases. We need to start killing the business of making shoddy products and hit them in their pocketbooks so they will pay attention.

When starting my remodel, I started researching ranges. On so many of them, computer chips when out, there were fires due to faulty wiring, and tons of other issues. That's why I ended up going with a vintage range. My Chambers gave 50 or so years of service, so with some cleaning and refinishing, it should last another 50. It's built like a tank.

Incedently, just this week, my Mom's gas cooktop "blew up". No one was hurt, thank goodness, but the cooktop is toast. It's a GE profile and about 5 1/2 years old, so it's out of warranty. Although she never really liked it (installed by home builder), it's not a sophisticated piece of equipment, it should have given her at least 10 to 15 years of service. Even her old '79 crappy Tappan from the house I grew up in, lasted 20 years before it finally gave out.