True $5000 doesn't buy much these days in a professional style range. Maybe for a good used car but professional style ranges run upwards of five, six, even seven thousand dollars.

True you can get gas ranges, even self cleaning type for a lot less, around five hundred dollars but they're only 30" wide, have only four burners and are generally sneered at in homes over four or five hundred thousand dollars in value.

As a home builder, I have purchased many high end appliances and I can truthfully say I can see no connection between price and dependability or quality. In fact in my experience the inverse is true. So here is daumco's maxim - The more something costs, the quicker it's likely to break down. Here's a supporting corollary - The more something costs, the more it costs to get repaired.

Ok, now that I've laid my groundwork, let's get to the subject. I'm not going to bore you with a silly model number, I'm just going to tell you about my $5000, 48" G.E. Monogram range with 6 gas burners and two electric (one self cleaning/convection) ovens and a grill, model # a combination of thirteen numbers and letters.

Now I don't know about you but I feel when I spend five to ten times what a ordinary range runs it should be trouble free instead of troublesome. Now I'm not saying my range is a lemon, it's maybe just a little lemony (is that a word?). For starters it had a one year warranty and what do you think happened one year and three weeks after installation. That's right, you guessed it. Has that happened to you? Anyway my grill wouldn't light so I called G.E. service.

Well here's the way this servicing works, you see it should cost almost six hundred dollars to fix but since I'm such a nice guy it's only going to cost me four hundred dollars and that's supposed to buy me off. Never mind that I could go down to Home Depot or Fry's and get a descent portable grill for half that. What do these people think I am, a retard?

Ok, no that wasn't enough to get me to write this review. Yes there's more. About a year later my matching $4500 stainless steel, yes, you guessed it, refrigerator/freezer went on strike. Previous to that the convection part of my high expense, questionable quality oven started working intermittently. Since it still worked on normal position and I was worried about another four hundred dollar repair, I didn't do anything until the repair man was there for the refrig. and of course it worked when he tried it. So to make a long story sort it still works off and on and now my self cleaning oven is also on strike. Wow, that sounds like it would be worth seven hundred.

Now that I told you my sad story, I should probably say something about my range. Being the current style stainless steel it is attractive. I like the grill but being only about ten by twenty inches it is a little small for larger projects. The six burners are easy to clean as is the grill. This range weighs a ton and if it's installed as instructed, it's not really movable for cleaning.

In addition to the range itself a back panel must be ordered separately. There are three styles, a low one which I have, a medium one which is about twelve inches high and a high one approximately twenty-four inches high and it has a little shelf. These backsplashes run from about $120 to $250.

As for the ovens, one is large and really nice, probably thirty inches wide and the other is dinky and almost useless, maybe twelve inches wide. As I mentioned, the large oven is convection and self cleaning and has three racks which are easily removed. The small one is neither conv. or S.C.. One thing that surprised me was that there is no timer. Even a base $300 range has a timer but not our Professional style range. I guess real cooks don't need timers. Since we're not professional cooks in our house we use the timer on our G.E. Profile microwave, which as of this writing (knock on wood) has been troublefree.

CONCLUSION

Perhaps I've been unlucky, God knows I'm not a lucky person but I don't think so. You see we have history going for us. I used to buy Sub Zero, which I think should really be named Sub Standard. Besides little things like plastic door shelves and crispers breaking, every box I bought for myself was cocked. I never noticed that otherwise in other homes I put them in but maybe if I lived in them I would have.

So there you have it. There really is no correlation between money and dependability. For example I have a three hundred dollar Roper refrigerator in my garage. Been there for about eight years and no trouble. None, nada. My $4500 G.E. refrigerator after two years had to be serviced. Get the picture?


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): $5000