We had a Kenmore side by side and it went out September 2004 (still under warranty at the time). The service guy from Sears stated that the relay was bad and replaced with a Gemline All-n-One Start Pack HS410. The same refrig went out again about 2 months ago and so we decided to purchase a new one since we lost 2 refrig full of food. We called an independent repair guy to fix the old refrig to simply have an extra. When he looked at the back, his response was "Wow, your compressor is bad and someone covered it up by using a hard start".

Is it possible that the compressor was bad at the intial repair and indeed it was a patch work to get past the warranty?

Also, the independent service guy stated that these were not recommended to be used by any of manufacturers. Is this also a true statement?

Hes half right.

The most common part to go bad on these models is that start device relay, not due to the compressor going out.

Now the first tech. should have never installed that 3-in-1 hard start kit, thats a NO-NO!!!
All the start device relays have to be the original part# as they were upgraded, and Whirlpool would not even honor a compressor warranty with a hard start kit on it, the hard start kit is what caused the compressor to go bad, not the original relay.

Jake

__________________
Appliance Repair School 1987-1988
Star Appliance Tech. 2 yrs. 1988-1990
Wards Appliance Tech. 11 yrs. 1990-2001
Sears Appliance Tech. 4 yrs. 2001-Oct. 2005
Jake's Appliance Repair Nov. 2005-present

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