Sub-Zero Refrigerators Reviews

The first Sub-Zero we purchased was clearly a lemon. This would have been about 1995. After about a year food spoiled, lettuce wilted and even pickles went bad. It took the local dealer three years to finally fix. THEN four years ago we purchased another one from a very fine and reputable dealer which we remain happy with. Unfortunately we are now faced with over $800 on repairs for a $12,000 appliance less than 4 years old!! And we are only in residence 6 months out of the year. Compare that to our Samsung Bespoke we purchased two years ago for our other home for $2700 and has only provided the BEST service (and a better design too since you do not have to open both doors to get to the produce drawers).

I would never recommend a Sub-zero appliance to anyone. We spent nearly 17k on a fridge that malfunctioned the first week in our brand new kitchen. We had lived through 6 months of construction and now it’s been a nightmare with this fridge. Multiple repairs, emails and calls and service visits wasting my time. The fridge failed to keep cool multiple times, ruining thousands of dollars in groceries. When they finally agreed to replace the awful unit, they pulled it out and the back wall was covered in mold due to the fridge. The pan below that was supposed to be evaporating was completely full of moldy water, days away from spilling over onto our brand new wood floors. They had the nerve to offer a $500 sub-zero Mastercard as a resolution. I’m so disappointed in this company. Never ever buy. Such a regret.

Our 2nd Sub-zero (a BI-36) is now a bit over 6 years old and more troublesome than our first one which lasted over 25 years. The defrost thermostat needed replacing within three months of purchase. It took the official authorized Sub-Zero repair service three visits to figure that out and repair it. Then, after five years, the freezer gasket failed. Now, the electronic control board has failed, and the freezer (again, the freezer) is operating barely at 32F. I am using a local non-authorized repair service that I have used before. When it works, the Sub-Zero is a fine refrigerator. But at over $10,000, it's not worth the money.

Unbelievable quality. My last sub lasted 30 years and still worked fine. If you are poor it’s not for you. But a ge disposable fridge.

An AI generated phone rep had me wait for almost an hour to "talk to a technician" in an attempt to fix my beeping fridge. I got an "email chat" with a technician that gave me no more advice than I learned from the usual internet search. So for $5, I wasted time thinking I would talk to a person, only to get an email chat---- worthless and I am disappointed.

The house I own had a Subzero refrigerator that quit working. It was in a size that is no longer made. Since the house had a Subzero, at the urging of my parents, I ordered a Subzero from Tri-Supply. From there everything went downhill. The cost of the refrigerator was ridiculous and I was a fool for even considering this.

I purchased a Subzero CL36 refrigerator/freezer in November, 2025. From first use, the ice maker leaked water into the ice bin. Two months and five service calls later, I still do not have a working ice maker in my brand new refrigerator. Sub Zero sells the slick appearance and features at crazy high prices, but the mechanical quality is crap.

Bought new about four years ago. Just had to repair a “control board” and it cost $1200. Sub Zero isn’t the quality product it built its reputation on. I bought my current Sub-Zero based on my past experience. The quality is not the same. You can do better for much less.

Having had only good experiences with Subzero/Wolf, we went full-in with Subzero/Wolf appliances a year-and-a-half ago after a reno and move: 48" French Door Fridge/freezer, steam oven, Masterchef wall oven, cooktop, Cove dishwasher. Except for the dishwasher, every other one of these appliances has been causing us grief since the minute they were installed.

I have an older Sub-Zero built in. I really dont know how old it is. My best guess is ..It's from the 80's. Never had a problem with it../Until this morning. I opened up the freezer and it was warm. I called a appliance repair person to come look at it. He did end up fixing it by switching off the breaker to it for 10 minutes and then turning the power back on, resetting it, and now it works fine. I was a little concerned about how old it was and asked the repair person if I should replace it. He told me that the new ones are junk and the one I have might even last 100 years.

Compressor died 1 yr after purchasing. Drain trough overflowed into wood floor. Door gasket needed replacement after 2.5 yrs. Not worth 6.5 thousand dollars. Very overpriced with very poor engineering. Not a dependable appliance.

A $15,000.00 Sub-Zero model 650 refrigerator, purchased from Pardini Appliance, Ukiah, CA in August of 2024, and I am unhappy. The door requires effort to close in certain positions. Many times it requires more than a gentle push as is the case when the door is past half way. We have found the door open on many occasions and the alarm volume cannot be raised enough to be heard away from the immediate area. The Ice tray is undersized and the ice falls out the back of the tray. When we discussed this with the service man he suggested taking the ice from the rear of the tray. Shouldn't the tray be the ideal size? After one year the icemaker needed to be replaced. A layer of ice builds up in the bottom of the ice tray, and has done so even after the icemaker was replaced.

Purchased and installed a “superior @ Sub-zero refrigerator in my new home in January 2025. Less than 3-6 months later I have 2 issues. First item with fan took almost 4 months to be repaired because they didn’t have item in stock. Now squeaky door and 4 weeks later nothing… Had to call again and here we go again. A pain in the ass.

I remodeled my kitchen in 2019 and went with a side-by-side Subzero fridge and freezer. In June 2025, my freezer stopped working and reported numerous codes and needed a new Subzero 7031851 Shroud Assy, Fre Fan - about a $200 part. About $250 worth of food thawed out and turned to mush. (Subzero said they'd reimburse me for the food loss. Ok, thanks, we shall see - haven't gotten a check yet...) And, while subzero is covering 80% of the repairs, my mother's (relatively inexpensive, comparatively) AMANA fridge/freezer is crammed full of food and has been running non-stop for 32 years....32 years!

I purchased a brand new Subzero refrigerator and had it professionally installed on February 8, 2018. Given the brand's reputation and the premium price point, I expected durability and reliability. Unfortunately, my experience has been quite the opposite. Shortly after the warranty expired, the control panel began malfunctioning, sometimes working, sometimes completely unresponsive. This issue has persisted intermittently for the past five years, despite careful usage and proper maintenance. The touchpad control panel has become increasingly unreliable, making the refrigerator difficult to operate consistently.

This $14,000 refrigerator stopped making ice in less than a year. Not to mention it took Sub-Zero 10 months to send us the last 2 drawers that were supposed to be included when we got it. I guess there’s no such thing as a quality product regardless of what you spend. Try another brand. It’s not worth the money.

We have a 30 year old SubZero. We have had to invest in repairs over the years, but our repairmen Alex is amazing. We just went 30 hours without power because of the horrific CA fires. When we opened our refrigerator and freezer, we did not lose one thing. Food in freezer still frozen solid, even ice and wine still chilled. Thank you SubZero.

No. The icemaker stops working about every 3 months. It is so annoying. The water filter and air filters from Sub-Zero are $129 and apparently they recommend replacement every 3 months. LOL. The repairman has been to our house 3 times for this fridge. If I were to pick our appliance package again, I would not include a Subzero refrigerator.

Paid $2,000 for repairs / parts after 3 years of purchase. Gasket broken (not covered by warranty), display dispenser broken (not covered by warranty), screws that hold the drawers were loose and needed replacement because they were defective from the beginning.

Gave our built-in Sub-Zero refrigerator, which is 3 years old, a two rating. And this is because at least it does keep our food cold/frozen. Beyond that, I would never recommend spending this type of money on this type of refrigerator. Why not?

Thing makes a very annoying loud noise. Subzero has no answers. They are unhelpful. They do not stand by their substandard piece of junk. Service has been out here 6 times in 3 months claiming nothing is wrong - sub zero should change its name to sub standard

We bought our SubZero 632 fridge over 20 years ago that we had matching cabinet panels made for it. Fridge has worked well over the years. Only issue is we replaced the fridge door gasket twice. The gasket seems to tear and the fridge will run longer than it should. I have called customer service as this is obviously an issue having the door gasket rip in the same area each time, but they aren’t willing in helping out with any of the costs. Other than that great fridge.

We spent over $12K for a Subzero fridge and over $14K for a Subzero Wolf range installed 6/2020. We purchased believing we were getting top notch quality and reliability. What we got are high end appliances with high end repair costs. Both the fridge & range have needed repairs...just outside the warranty period. Ticks us off to spend big bucks for appliances that are no better than anything else on the market, but they sure are expensive to repair. Read the fine print in their warranty. For example "the sealed system" in their fridge has a 10 yr warranty, but all the stuff likely to fail like fans are not in "the sealed system". Big bucks repairs $$$$.

Made in China. Buyer beware. The sales person said it was "made in USA", the Subzero representative said it was "made in USA", and the repairman said it was "made in USA" using all US parts. The repairman was absolutely shocked when every part replaced was marked "made in China". I still have the parts. This multi-billion dollar Bakke family product still fails to work and we are back to using the Yeti cooler. When I look at the internals of this unit, it appears to be made of sub-assemblies made in China similar to all other refrigerator brand internals.

If you bought a new fridge every five years, Your fridge would look and feel and operate new. Or you could spend fifteen thousand and buy a Sub Zero and after six years it is garbage. Basically at five and six years everything starts to fall apart. It usually ices up every couple of weeks and it is always dirty and moldy. Four of our friends have the same kind of models and all experience the same problem. We would never recommend buying a high fridge like this again.

We paid extra for the door dispenser for ice and water in our side-by-side model BI-42SD/S/PH. It throws ice everywhere. One must hold the glass right up against the top and it still misses the glass. The water sometimes also sprays or goes in different directions. Don't buy this.

I purchased a drawer refrigerator (model ID-24R) for about $6K from Sub-Zero. I am very disappointed because a normal gallon of milk or juice container is too tall and won't fit. This is ridiculous because drawer refrigerators are typically used to store beverages. I've had to purchase glass containers to store milk and juice.

We purchased a SubZero refrigerator and had to wait 13 months to receive it. From the moment we finally received it and had it installed it made a churning noise for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour about every two or three hours. SubZero's repair company in the area, Box, sent a man out twice to troubleshoot but he could not find the problem. He got a technician from SubZero on the phone and allowed him to hear a recording of the noise and the tech said it was most likely a problem fan. So five fans are going to be replaced but the replacement fans will not reach us for two months after the original install date. So, we wait and cross our fingers. The noise is quite disruptive to our lives and having spent $16,000 for this new refrigerator we think we deserve better from such a reputed premium brand company.

Been 9 months still waiting on parts for the initial delivery of my Sub - Zero fridge. No shelves on the doors. Missing 6 shelves. How hard is it to make shelves for a fridge? I now have to wait to mid December with no guarantee on delivery. Worst experience buying an appliance ever. Do not buy from Sub-Zero if you want an appliance with all the parts. I can't believe this company is so slow on delivery of a simple working fridge.

Bought a top of the line Subzero 2.5 yrs ago and already the fridge door won’t stay closed. We’re told it’s a bad gasket and not under warranty. Expect to spend a couple hundred bucks on the fix. We’ve had $1K fridges for 15 yrs and they still worked fine. So disappointing to spend $23k and have this happen.

I left a very poor review about six months ago. The water dispenser in my three year old fridge kept leaking although it was repaired three times. I finally called the customer service. I was given an option of getting a brand new fridge. I received it a couple weeks ago. I am very pleased!

Recently bought a new 36" fridge and 36" freezer from Sub-Zero. Within days the freezer iced up so badly it was unusable. The soonest repair date I could get from them was 2 months away. Of course they hauled away the old freezer on install day so I have no freezer. For the amount of money I spend on these units it is unacceptable that service is so poor. And there is no guarantee they will be able to fix the unit when they finally come out. Not happy.

I ordered a complete SubZero Wolf & Cove kitchen in June of 2022. 16 months later I am still waiting for my refrigerator. The original delivery date was supposed to be May of 2023, all of the other components made it on time. The refrigerator was postponed until July 9th, that never happened, it was then postponed to August 9th, two weeks later again until September 9th. Then my local SubZero vendor Jeff Lynch of Greenville calls and tells me the regional rep for SubZero pulled my refrigerator and it was now going to be October 24th. No one will give me a reason as to why this was done.

Purchased SubZero refrigerator for new home. Thought was to go for the best. Very disappointed. Not worth the extra $$$ spent. When issues arise none have been covered by warranty. So not sure the value is there.

This company is a Joke. I purchased in the past 4 years 4 times new appliances for an entire kitchen for new homes. Every order was over $45,000. Last year I bought again (for myself) new kitchen appliances and got everything except the 36" column refrigerator and 36" column freezer, Lucky me - I got the refrigerator on March 2023, but the freezer keeps being postponed by a month at a time. I would consider myself a good Sub-Zero customer, but I never got a phone call from the company. After my store insisted, the company's sales person (Nick) called me after 2 months of requests. He promised me to investigate and call me back the following week on Monday. That was a month ago without him even trying to reach me back.

In February 2023, I purchased a new 42 inch Sub-Zero side-by-side stainless refrigerator freezer combination that would be built-in. It malfunctioned several times and then an alarm started going off at a sign that said service. Another time a wire just dropped down from the middle of the machine to the floor and every evening and afternoon the machine would make a noise like a truck. I contacted the people that I purchased it from the House of Appliances in Delray Beach and they were very uncooperative, but did agree to return it. Sub-Zero I sent a letter to the president of the company. He never responded. Finally they did take it back. But I had one from 2006 and it was excellent. This new product is made like junk. Don’t buy from this company.

I bought a side by side Subzero fridge with a filtration system. After buying the unit, I had the filtered water tested with unfiltered water in my home. The results were exactly the same. The authorized servicing company came to my house, claiming I must have a defective filter. They replaced the filter and the same results. The filtered water is NOT being filtered. I hired a plumber to test the water but also tested on my own with a TDS detector. Again, the water from the fridge is always IN THE RED. I called Absolute Appliances, where I purchased the unit. They referred me to Subzero customer service, and I'm just waiting for someone to get back to me. It's been a horrible experience.

I received my refrigerator in October of 2022 after waiting almost one year for it to arrive. Once installed it ran fine for the first month. Then, the alarm (chime) started to go off. I contacted Sub-Zero and they sent one of their repair people to fix it. He told me this is a common problem with the model refrigerator I had. It was electrical interference causing the refrigerator to throw a “1511 code”. He bundled some wires together and left. Several days later the alarm started to chime again. I contacted Sub-zero, they sent out the same company out to repair the problem.

I just received my new one-door Subzero (November 2022). I bought it at RC Willey in Orem Utah. The water dispenser shoots water everywhere inside the fridge after you remove the cup, the butter compartment door doesn’t stay closed and every time I open the door, the butter boxes fall hitting the bottom freezer stainless still door. It will make a dent soon. The door compartments are too narrow. I can’t fit anything there. I spent almost 13K for this piece of junk. Don’t buy it. The older models were excellent, but not anymore. They are terribly designed and constructed now.

It worked fine for 6 1/2 years and then it started making noise. The “certified” repair people replaced the circuit board and the fan motor for $1200 which didn’t change a thing. It’s actually worse. This refrigerator can be heard 40 feet away and this has been going on for six months. It sounds like an old car is in my kitchen… And it sends out vibrations. It’s so annoying. Sitting 15 feet away from it you can hear a wind from the fan. And that’s after the repair. When the freezer compressor comes on there is a loud vibrating noise, and then hours groaning on and off and it runs constantly. Not only is it not any better after the replacement parts, it’s actually worse. It’s like they can’t fix it. Changing those parts was a guessing game. Now the “certified” repair is telling me all refrigerators make a noise. Really? That’s rich! If they change compressor that’s another $2000 because only the part is covered not the labor. I actually don’t know what to do at this point.