Unauthorized Charcoal: GE fridges won't dispense ice or water unless your filter authenticates as an official ($55!) component January 23, 2020 https://boingboing.net/2020/01/23/proprietary-carbon.html
I wonder if someone tried to sue them for contaminated water and they discovered it was an aftermarket filter. That is the problem as I see it. There are no public safety regulations over those filters. Who knows whats really in some of those aftermarket ones?
My GE refrigerator has that "feature". So far it's still dispensing water and ice, but every time I get some ice, it tells me how many days I'm overdue for a filter change. There is a hack some people have done to use generic filters. I called GE and they shipped me a "dummy" filter that you can install in place of a working filter. This item used to be shipped with the fridge, but now you have to call and they will ship one to you for "free". This is supposedly useful if your GE fridge stops dispensing ice and water. You can install this blank and the fridge will dispense ice and water, although it won't be filtered. You get a message telling you that your water isn't being filtered. Some people have removed the chip from this filter blank, and taped it in the filter compartment where the chip reader is located. You can then install a generic filter. The fridge thinks the filter blank is installed, so dispenses water and ice, but tells you that your water isn't being filtered, when actually it is. But since my refrigerator is still dispensing filtered water, I'll keep going with the current filter until I see a drop off in pressure and ice cubes start to get smaller. It's currently telling me that I'm 45 days past due for a filter change....thanks, GE. If I'd known my fridge required a filter with a chip, I'd have looked elsewhere.
There's a simple solution to this high priced baloney employing the above noted dummy filter. Install a filter in your main water line feed. Or alternatively and probably cheaper filter-wise, install the filter in your cold water line feed to your kitchen sink. Then run the line from the fridge to that. This gives you filtered water from both the kitchen facet and the fridge. These filters tend to be cheaper than whole house water line filters.
Yup. That's what I did for under the kitchen sink. I built this using a Pentek/Pentair P1 1 micron sediment filter ahead of a Culligan D40A. It also feeds the drink faucet on the sink top. The $5 P1 is simply to do all of the dirty work, as you can see, ahead of the $35 D40A's own 0.5 micron particulate filter. As of my shopping research a few years back, the Culligan D40A has the best filtering at its price point for the "standard 10 inch housing" form factor. Once I hung the filters and attached supply lines, I had a plumber do the actual hook up to the pipes. I might have tried that myself, but as grandpa used to say, "Water has no mercy."
I'm with itman. I really like the idea of filtered water for the dispenser and ice, but if you have a filter for line going to the refrigerator, you don't need a filter in the fridge. So in that case, these fridge should come with such a dummy filter, or the water and ice system should operate just fine (and remain clean) with no filter installed - and without yelling at the owner to replace the filter.
Hacker Bypasses GE's Ridiculous Refrigerator DRM The technique allows you to use 'unauthorized' water filters, which cost a quarter as much as GE's official filters June 12, 2020 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxpjy/hacker-bypasses-ges-ridiculous-refrigerator-drm
I am trying to undestand why anyone would buy a fridge like that to begin with? Or if they do, why complain about original parts? It's like buying a car and then complaining that a garage insists on original parts for the oil change and whatnot. If you don't like it, you can buy something else. There are plenty of dumb fridges where you put your own water in and make your own ice. Mrk
I guess because it never occurred to them that anyone would do something like that. So they didn't discover the problem until replacing the filter. And that likely didn't happen while returning it was an option.
