<raises hand>
It's 2015 now, am I cleared to take off?
I was just catching up and saw one post about the Platinum being a lower-end product from the same manufacturer. Was some question about whether a distributor of Odyssey would have a vested interest in saying that. Could be. I wouldn't be surprised.
However, I'll offer an anecdote about Sears...
My mom's fridge was pretty old and I had had to rebuild the ice machine a few times. Mom was an ice junkie; being raised in the south, there had to be a glass of iced tea somewhere within reach at all times. When the ice machine would stop working, I'd hear about it long and hard until I schlepped over there and did something about it. Over the years, this became more frequent. Like once a month frequent.
Finally I just got sick and tired of it, and since Xmas was coming, decided to buy mom a new fridge - though the only thing I really cared about was A) a bulletproof ice machine, and B) a long warranty so someone else would have to take the call if the ice machine quit working.
Went to Sears and looked at their very best Kenmore side-by-side fridge. Really nice, even had a built-in replaceable water filter. Ice dispenser fed from an ice bucket in the door. Removable ice bucket, that could be pulled out and the ice poured into some other container. There was a drive motor in the door, with a shaft that linked to the blades in the bottom of the ice bucket. Sort of like a blender. To dispense ice, the blade turned one way, to dispense crushed ice, it turned the other way.
Pulled out the ice bucket, and saw that the shaft coupling from the motor shaft to the blade shaft was a keyed coupling. A bit like this, except on that unit, there were 3 lands and 3 grooves on each shaft:
Also, the couplings were not replaceable - the grooves were machined directly into the shaft ends. AND upon removing the ice bucket, I noted on the floor demo model that one of the teeth was broken off the end of the motor shaft...bloody hell. To fix that, you'd have to replace the motor.
Playing with it a bit, I could see how it could happen - misalignment of the shafts when the ice bucket was seated. Crap. I wasn't going to buy a failure waiting to happen. Looked around the showroom floor. Spotted what looked like an identical fridge, but with a Whirlpool badge on it. Went over and opened it up and yup, identical.
Then I pulled out the ice bucket and lo and behold - someone had added a sleeve around the motor shaft, which extended past the motor shaft and forced a proper alignment between the two shafts. Nice.
So I asked the sales lady why the Whirlpool was better than the Kenmore. Here is what I was told:
"
Sears works with manufacturers to design a new product, and the manufacturer makes it. But the deal is, that the manufacturer cannot sell the same product, under their own name, until a certain time has passed. On some products it's six months, on others it's a year."
(So that Whirlpool fridge was the same model, but Whirlpool had a year to refine the design before they started selling it under their own name.)
So for me personally, it's not far-fetched to think that perhaps the Diehard Platinum is not *exactly* the same as the Odyssey. I'm not saying it isn't, but am saying I wouldn't be surprised to find out there is a difference.
And to end the story...
Bought mom the Whirlpool. With 10 year extended warranty, and free delivery and installation - 2300 bucks all in. It was worth it - not one problem with that ice machine in the next decade until mom died.
