When consumers pay good money for appliances, they rely on the company’s promises and the quality of products that are claimed to work properly. What if the purchase fails you? How does the warranty work? Will you get the reimbursement?
As a consumer, you have the right to ask for a solution. This is how hundreds of LG refrigerators with cooling defects have led to LG Electronics Class Action Lawsuit. Berger Montague, a class action law firm in civil litigation, along with co-counsel from Girard Sharp, has represented the owners of LG refrigerator with a “no cooling” event in court, and they have won the case.
People should not be paying good amounts of money, thousands of dollars, for these fridges only to have them break and to add insult to injury, to have to chase down the company to beg them for a repair.
As a result of this lawsuit, LG Electronics will provide up to $6,000+ cash relief to customers as part of a $1.5M LG Refrigerator Class Action Settlement.
PissedConsumer.com invited Amey J. Park, a Berger Montague associate, for a video interview to ask about the details of this “no cooling event” LG Class Action Lawsuit. In this video, Amey explains who can claim the cash relief as part of an LG Fridge Class Action Settlement.
Here are questions discussed during the video interview:
- What is LG Refrigerator Class Action Lawsuit?
- How long did the LG case take?
- Who qualifies for cash relief?
- How much can you get?
- Does LG settlement cover people outside of the class?
- How long is the warranty extended?
- Why fight for your consumer rights?
What is LG Refrigerator Class Action Lawsuit?
Amey J. Park: If you purchased an LG refrigerator that was manufactured between 2014 and 2017 and your refrigerator stopped cooling, you should definitely go to the settlement administrator website, www.LGfridgesettlement.com, and find out if you have a covered model. Because you can recover real money.
If you have documentation to support your experience, you may be eligible to claim thousands of dollars in reimbursement. And even if you don't have documentation, you could claim anywhere between $50 to $450 just by signing the claim form and showing that you have a covered refrigerator. So, there's real money to be had out there if you are a covered consumer with an LG refrigerator that stopped cooling.
Michael Podolsky: Today, I will be talking to Amey Park of Berger Montague who will present the LG case. They have won a case against LG regarding refrigerators. I'll let Amey speak about it and talk about what Berger Montague has done in that case.
Amey: Thanks for having me. Yes, so my firm Berger Montague, along with our co-counsel from Girard Sharp, had been investigating problems specifically relating to LG manufactured refrigerators. And we are pleased to announce that recently, Girard Sharp and we were able to come to an agreement with LG for a class-wide settlement to provide significant amounts of money to people who purchase these refrigerators and experience no cooling failures.
How Long Was the LG Case?
Michael: Thank you, Amey. How long have you been working on this case?
Amey: We've been investigating it for quite a while as has our co-counsel firm. In the first case, this settlement was actually several different cases that were consolidated into one for the purpose of settlement. And the first case was filed last spring in 2019. And there had been some investigation by both of our firms before that time. So, it's been going on in terms of the life of litigation that's actually pretty short, but the investigation had been going on for some time before that.
Who Qualifies for LG Cash Relief?
Michael: Can you summarize the experience of a consumer that would be covered by this case?
Amey: Sure, absolutely. Well, first of all, I do want to say that it covers a certain list of model numbers, and I can give you that settlement administers a website with the model numbers on there for your viewers to check whether they have an eligible model number within the manufacturing period.
That aside the experience that we're covering is basically what I described to you. People who bought these covered refrigerators and paid good money for them. One day they woke up and the refrigerator just stopped cooling. Sometimes it would be the fridge that would go slowly first, sometimes it would be the freezer, sometimes it would be both within 24 hours.
But the people who can recover under this are people that had their refrigerator fail and had some sort of loss. Whether it be they had to re-buy food that spoiled or the more significant losses are people who had to wait days, if not weeks, if not months, to get their refrigerator repaired. So, that's one experience that people could recover for.
Another is we spoke with many, many people who not only had one failure, but they had two, three, four, even more failures. So it would be repaired and a week later or a year later, any amount of time later, the refrigerator would stop cooling again.
So first, if you had property loss, spoiled food. Second, if you had delayed repairs. Third, if you had multiple cooling failures. And fourth, if you had to pay out of pocket for parts or labor to fix this no cooling event. You shouldn't have had to do that. You bought an expensive refrigerator, it shouldn't have stopped working.
And if you had to pay out of pocket for those repairs, you should be able to recover for that too. So, the experiences in some are property damage, delayed repairs, multiple failures, and/or out-of-pocket costs for labor or parts and those are all stacking. So, it's not as if you have to only choose one of those five options, you can choose a mix and match of what applies to you.
How Much Can You Receive as Part of LG Settlement?
Michael: So, different consumers will get different amounts of settlements as a result of it. Is that the case? What shall consumers do if they have experienced an issue and they want to apply for this case?
Amey: So, there are two important questions to answer within your question. First, yes you're correct that someone maybe didn't have a terrible experience and maybe they only had to pay $50 for a repair, even though we believe you shouldn't have had to, and lost $50 in spoiled food.
Well, that person would get, assuming that their claim is valid, $100. Now I have spoken with people who've had two or three failures and they had to wait 40 days for a repair and they lost spoiled food for both of those failures of $200, $300 each. That person will be able to recover a lot more because they had to wait 45 days to get their refrigerator repaired and the refrigerator broke twice. So, you're right, depending on someone's experience they would get different amounts of money.
And second, what I do want to point out that's important, another distinction is people who don't have supporting documentation, maybe didn't keep all their receipts for groceries that you had to buy two years ago to replace your spoiled food or the out of pocket costs that you might've had to pay things like that, those people can still recover as long as they can show proof that they purchased a covered refrigerator, but they don't have to submit any other documentation.
Those people can still recover by checking the claim form for the items that apply to them. Signing the claim form to verify that what you're checking off is accurate and you can still get money, a lesser amount of money because you don't have the documentation.
But for people who kept all those records and had these extreme experiences, those people can get more money. So, in answer to your question, yes, Michael...
You can get more money depending on how extreme your bad experiences were and you can also get less or more money depending on if you have supporting receipts.
...or things like that or if you don't. But we didn't want to leave out people who might, may not have kept every receipt. So, you can still recover money.
Does LG Settlement Cover People Outside of the Class?
Michael: How would this settlement affect people that have an LG refrigerator, but have not suffered any cooling event yet? Does this settlement cover people outside of the class?
Amey: That's a great question. So if you have a covered model, you are within the manufacturing period and meet the other eligibility requirements, but you have not experienced a cooling failure, you can still be in the class. You are still in the class. And what you're covered for is if that cooling event happens in the future.
So, as part of the settlement, LG agreed to extend the warranties of the basic warranty that comes with their refrigerator, and also implement an enhanced customer care program where they've agreed to correct some of these problems we've been seeing.
These extreme delays, these customer service issues that are causing these extreme delays, fixing the compressor parts more quickly. And the point of this is that if people are still experiencing these multiple failures or extreme delays in the future, there also is a claim mechanism where they can still submit a claim.
Say if your cooling failure happens next year, you can still submit a claim if you have multiple failures or extremely delayed repairs a year from now for that event that we're talking about hypothetically is happening in 2021.
So, you are still covered under the settlement. Now, it's important also that if you haven't experienced a “no cooling” event and you do not want to be part of this settlement, you do have to opt out. Which is pretty simple, you just send your name and information and that you would like to opt out to the settlement administrator. And as I said before, we can provide the settlement administrator's website address.
How Long Is the Warranty Extended?
Michael: Everyone who owns an LG refrigerator should pay attention to whether they had a “no cooling” event or not. Because for some people, it may extend their warranties. Also, people need to watch out for no cooling events happening in the future. How long does the warranty get extended? Do you know anything you can advise on that?
Amey: Yes. So, the original warranty that came with these refrigerators was staggered. It basically had a 10-year parts only coverage of the compressor, and it had lesser periods of coverage for the labor of the other parts.
In other words, if your refrigerator evaporator broke two years after your purchase, that might not be covered in terms of you might have to pay labor costs. Now, LG has agreed to extend, starting from the date you purchased the refrigerator, five years, all parts and labor will be covered for no cooling events. So, no one should be having to pay any parts or any labor to get a repair after a cooling failure for five years from the date of purchase.
Why Should You Fight for Your Consumer Rights?
Michael: Why does it make you feel good when you wake up in the morning to fight for consumer rights?
Amey: That's a great question. The real answer is I have directly spoken with numerous people who are hardworking parents or people who travel a lot and everyone needs a refrigerator. And you don't realize what an inconvenience it is to not have your refrigerator for a week or sometimes even a month until it happens.
These are hardworking people who don't have time to be calling LG 10, 15 times just to beg to get their refrigerator fixed all the while they're trying to feed their toddler, or they come home from a business trip and they don't have any food in the fridge and they haven't had any food in the fridge for weeks.
People should not be paying good amounts of money, thousands of dollars, for these fridges only to have them break and to add insult to injury, to have to chase down the company to beg them for a repair. People don't have time for that in their lives. And those are the stories of the people that I personally spoke with who are not just trying to complain about every little thing. They are at their wit's end and they just want their refrigerator to work so they can get on with their lives.
Michael: Thank you, Amey.
That said, LG Action Lawsuit brought by Berger Montague and Girard Sharp has led to a $1.5 million LG Refrigerator Class Action Settlement. The owners of defective LG refrigerators can now claim cash relief of up to $6,000.
We’re thankful to Amey J. Park for sharing the details of the LG case and for providing recommendations to consumers on how they can become part of the LG Electronics Class Actions Settlement over the defective refrigerators.
To find out if you’re eligible and apply for money recovery, visit the official LG Electronics Class Actions Settlement page here.