Portland's online marketplaces are full of $150 refrigerators, and some of them are genuinely great buys — a solid second unit for the garage or a stopgap for a rental. Others are somebody else's compressor problem wearing a fresh wipe-down. We repair the aftermath weekly, so here's the inspection we'd run before handing over cash.
Ask for it running — and put a thermometer in it
"Worked when we unplugged it" is the most expensive sentence in the used-appliance world. A fridge that's been sitting can hide a dead start relay or a tired compressor that won't survive restart. Ask the seller to have it plugged in and cold when you arrive; bring a cheap thermometer and look for the fresh-food side holding somewhere in the high 30s. No cold, no deal — at any price.
Listen to the compressor start
Unplug it, wait five minutes, plug it back in and listen. A healthy compressor hums up smoothly within a few seconds. Repeated clicking — click, pause, click — is the start relay failing or the compressor refusing, and both mean you're shopping for trouble. A knock or rattle at start that fades is wear; a knock that stays is a countdown.
Read the frost, grip the gasket, eye the coils
Open the freezer and study the walls: a light even chill is right, while a thick frost ridge on the back panel means defrost problems already in progress. Close the door on a strip of paper — a healthy gasket grips it; a paper that slides free means air leaks and constant running. Peek at the coils (back or beneath): a machine someone never cleaned tells you how the rest of its life went.
Decode the age before you believe the ad
"About five years old" routinely means twelve. The serial plate inside the fresh-food compartment encodes the manufacture date — formats vary by brand, but a quick search of the serial format with the brand name settles it in a minute. Our honest cutoffs: under eight years with a clean inspection is a reasonable buy; past twelve, you're buying the remaining life of a compressor nobody can warranty.
The garage-unit exception
For a beer-and-overflow fridge in the garage, the math relaxes — an older unit that passes the running test can serve for years, and if it dies you've lost little. Just know that garages around here swing hot and cold enough that a marginal machine goes downhill faster; pick the healthiest candidate, not the cheapest.
What a used fridge actually costs
The purchase price is the down payment. Add a gasket here, a fan there, and a marketplace bargain can quietly total more than a clearance new unit with a warranty. Our rule for buyers: cap the purchase at what you can afford to lose, inspect like this checklist says, and if a used unit you already own starts warming — get a fixed-price diagnosis before assuming the worst. Plenty of "dying" used fridges just need the small fix their previous owner skipped.
