It is a nameplate. Sears commissioned appliances from real manufacturers and sold them under its own badge, and the practice left a fingerprint on every unit: the three digits before the period on the rating plate identify the company that built it. That is not trivia. It names the parts catalog, the service documentation and the code table, and it is why two Kenmore refrigerators of the same age can need completely different repairs for the same complaint.
10 appliances · 7 manufacturers
What we repair, and who really made it.
Refrigerator, freezer, ice maker, dishwasher, washer, dryer, range, wall oven, cooktop and range hood. Each page says which companies built that appliance under this badge and what that changes — because a Whirlpool-built refrigerator and an LG-built one are two different appliances wearing one nameplate.
- 10 appliance types
- 7 manufacturers behind the badge
- 65 models with a page of their own
- 3 lines: Kenmore, Elite and Pro
By appliance
Each one, and who built the ones we see
The climate reorders this list. What a defrost circuit has to cope with, how long a dishwasher heater survives the water, what a long flat vent run does to a dryer — those three decide most of what we are called out for here.
-
French door · side-by-side · top and bottom freezer Kenmore refrigerator
The appliance the badge is best known for, and the one where knowing who built it changes the repair most. A Kenmore refrigerator in a South Florida kitchen is a Whirlpool, a Frigidaire or an LG underneath, and the first three digits of the model number say which. That decides the parts, the diagnostic sequence and whether there is a published code table to read at all — so it is the first thing we ask for.
- 106 is Whirlpool, 253 is Frigidaire, 795 is LG
- Ice, water and the defrost circuit are most of the call volume
- The parts catalog is the builder's, not the badge's
-
Upright and chest · garage and utility room Kenmore freezer
Standalone uprights and chest freezers, most of them Frigidaire-built or Whirlpool-built, and most of them living somewhere hot: a garage, a utility room, a covered porch. That location is half the diagnosis. A freezer asked to hold zero degrees in a garage that reaches ninety-five is working at the edge of what it was designed for, and it fails differently from one in a kitchen.
- 253 is Frigidaire-built, 106 is Whirlpool-built
- Where it lives decides how it fails here
- Manual-defrost chest units have no defrost circuit to blame
-
Standalone and undercounter · a machine of its own Kenmore ice maker
Standalone and undercounter ice makers, which are a separate appliance from the ice maker built into a refrigerator door. They have their own compressor, their own water path and their own harvest mechanism, and they are designed to run continuously rather than in the background. In South Florida that means they run almost every hour of the year, on water that is hard enough to change how they behave within months.
- A machine in its own right, not a refrigerator part
- Mineral buildup is the common ending here
- Which stage the cycle stops at is the diagnosis
-
Built-in · Kenmore and Kenmore Elite Kenmore dishwasher
Built-in dishwashers. 665 is the number on most of the plates we see and it is Whirlpool-built; 587 is Frigidaire and 630 is Bosch, and all three turn up in South Florida kitchens. Whirlpool publishes a real code scheme for these, which makes a dishwasher one of the more readable appliances on this badge — provided you read the code against the right builder's table.
- 665 is Whirlpool, 587 is Frigidaire, 630 is Bosch
- Drainage and wash performance are most of the calls
- The code on the display is Whirlpool's code
-
Top-load and front-load · 110 and 796 Kenmore washer
Laundry is where the decode matters most, because a Kenmore washer can be a Whirlpool, an an LG, and those are two genuinely different machines. A 110 and a 796 do not share a pump, a control board, a diagnostic sequence or a code table, and they do not fail the same way. The model number is not a formality on this appliance — it is the difference between the right visit and the wrong one.
- 110 is Whirlpool-built, 796 is LG-built
- Drain, spin and leaks are most of what we see
- Two washers under one badge, and two code tables
-
Electric and gas · 110, 796 and 417 Kenmore dryer
Electric and gas dryers built by Whirlpool, LG and Frigidaire under the badge. On this appliance the single most useful thing we can tell you is that a large share of no-heat and long-cycle calls are the vent rather than the dryer — and in South Florida houses the vent runs are longer, flatter and wetter than the ones these machines were designed around.
- 110 is Whirlpool-built, 796 is LG-built, 417 is Frigidaire-built
- The vent causes more of these calls than any part does
- Gas and electric fail in different places
-
Freestanding and slide-in · gas and electric Kenmore range
Freestanding and slide-in ranges, gas and electric. 790 is the number we see most and it is Frigidaire-built; 362 turns up on GE-built ranges and 911 on another range family altogether. A range is the appliance a household notices fastest when it stops, and it is also the one where the difference between a sensor, an element and a control board is the difference between a modest repair and a conversation about replacing it.
- 790 is Frigidaire, 362 is GE, 911 is a range prefix too
- Oven sensor and bake element are most of the calls
- Gas surface problems are usually the igniter, not the valve
-
Single and double · built into cabinetry Kenmore wall oven
Built-in wall ovens, single and double, mostly Frigidaire-built. What separates a wall oven from the oven in a range is not the cooking — it is the access. The appliance is fixed into joinery, often at height and often stacked with a microwave above it, and getting to the back of it is a real part of the job rather than a detail.
- Access is a genuine part of the work on these
- Sensor and element cover most of the calls
- A stacked installation changes the visit
-
Gas, radiant and induction · drop-in Kenmore cooktop
Drop-in cooktops — gas, radiant electric and induction. A cooktop is the simplest appliance in the kitchen on gas and one of the most electronic on induction, and the two share almost nothing but the hole they sit in. What they do share is that a single dead zone is usually a component rather than the whole appliance.
- One dead zone is rarely the whole cooktop
- Gas is mechanical, induction is electronic
- The glass itself is the one part we cannot repair
-
Under-cabinet and chimney · ducted and recirculating Kenmore range hood
Under-cabinet and chimney hoods, and this is the one appliance on the badge with a ventilation specialist behind it — the 233 prefix is Broan. There is not much to a hood: a motor, a switch, a lamp and a path for the air. Which is why most of what we are called about turns out to be the duct or the filters rather than the hood.
- 233 is Broan-built — a ventilation maker, not an appliance one
- Most complaints are the duct or the filters
- Recirculating hoods cannot extract, by design
The fact this whole site is built on
Kenmore has never manufactured an appliance
Every model we have a page for
Where the badge does the least
Kenmore, Elite and Pro are trim, not engineering
The three lines describe finish, feature level and price rather than a family of shared parts. An Elite refrigerator may be LG-built and an Elite range Frigidaire-built, and neither has anything mechanical in common with the other. When somebody tells us they have a Kenmore Elite, the useful next question is still the same one: what are the first three digits.
Before you book
The three questions we ask, and what each one settles
Which appliance and where it lives
- A freezer in a garage and the same freezer in a kitchen fail differently here.
- A built-in or stacked installation changes how many people arrive.
- Outdoor and patio installations bring salt air into the diagnosis.
The first three digits
- They name the manufacturer, which names everything else.
- The plate is inside a door, behind a kick panel or on the frame.
- Elite and Pro are trim levels and tell us far less than the digits do.
What it is doing and for how long
- Sudden and gradual point at different components.
- Anything that changed in the house — a storm, a remodel, a new disposer.
- Whatever the display says, photographed before anybody resets it.
The work itself
Every repair we do
A set of jobs hangs off each appliance above. If you already know what it needs, come at it from the work instead.
-
from $95 Diagnostic visit
Nobody names a part on this site until somebody has measured something. On this badge the visit starts one step earlier than it does on most makes: with the model number, because the first three digits tell us which manufacturer built the appliance and therefore which service documentation, which diagnostic sequence and which parts catalog apply. Arriving without that is guessing at three appliances at once.
- The prefix read first, then the appliance
- What it reports, measured rather than assumed
- Credited toward the repair when you go ahead
-
from $95 OEM cross reference and parts sourcing
The job that only exists on a badge-engineered appliance. A Kenmore part number is not the part number the factory used, and on a discontinued unit the difference decides whether the repair is possible at all. We cross-reference the Kenmore number to the builder's own number and tell you plainly whether the part is current, superseded or gone.
- The builder's part number, not the badge's
- Superseded numbers traced rather than guessed
- An honest answer when a part no longer exists
-
from $125 Appliance maintenance
Scheduled work in one visit rather than an emergency in three months. Condenser coils, door seals, filters, the dryer duct and the dishwasher drain path — the things that fail quietly here and take a component with them when they do. In this climate this is the service that changes the arithmetic most.
- Coils, seals, filters and the duct in one visit
- Priced below a diagnosis plus the repair it prevents
- The interval that suits South Florida rather than the manual
-
from $145 Appliance installation
Connection, leveling and a working test, done so the appliance does not spend its life fighting its installation. Half the calls we take about a new appliance are about how it went in: a drain hose without a high loop, a dryer vent crushed behind the machine, a refrigerator with no clearance at the back.
- Leveled and tested rather than plugged in
- Gas and stacked installations quoted on the job
- The install decides how the appliance ages
-
from $155 Refrigerator not cooling repair
The most common call there is, and the one most often quoted as a sealed system when it is not. The order of investigation depends on who built the cabinet, which is why we ask for the prefix first — a Whirlpool-built 106 and an LG-built 795 arrive at this symptom by different routes and report it differently.
- Nothing gets named until the setting and the airflow are ruled out
- The route depends on the builder, and we read it first
- Sealed system last, because it is last in reality
-
from $175 Defrost system repair
A refrigerator that warms up over days while the freezer stays cold is usually a defrost story, and in this climate it is a common one: every time a tired door seal lets damp air in, the evaporator has more ice to clear and the circuit has more work than it was sized for.
- Heater, thermostat and control tested as a circuit
- The seal checked in the same visit, or it comes back
- Ice that returns is the symptom, not the cause
-
from $155 Ice maker repair
The ice maker inside a refrigerator, which stops for cheaper reasons than most people assume. Production depends on freezer temperature. An ice maker that has slowed is very often reporting a freezer that has crept warm, and correcting that is a smaller and cheaper job than fitting a module.
- Freezer temperature before the module
- Water supply before the mechanism
- The module replaced when the module is the answer
If yours is not on this list
This nameplate has been on more than ten kinds of appliance
Sears badged a great deal over the decades and this page covers what we cover routinely. Something outside it is still worth a phone call.
Give us three digits from the plate and a description of the behavior, and we will say what it commonly proves to be. Those digits identify the company that built the machine, which is where everything on this site begins.
Before you call
Questions about the appliances themselves
How do I find out who made mine?
Read the model number on the rating plate and look at the three digits before the period. 110, 106 and 665 are Whirlpool; 795 and 796 are LG; 253, 790 and 587 are Frigidaire; 362 and 363 are GE; 233 is Broan; 911 is Roper; 630 is Bosch. Tell us those three digits and the visit starts already knowing what is behind the panel.
Does it matter that Sears is gone?
For parts, less than people fear. The parts were never Sears' own — they belong to the manufacturer that built the appliance, and they are catalogued under that company's numbers. What it does mean is that a Kenmore part number sometimes has to be cross-referenced before anything can be ordered, and that is a job we list on its own.
Do you repair Kenmore microwaves?
They are not on this page. What we publish is what we cover as a matter of course, and it is worth a call if yours is something else — the list is not the edge of what we do.
Are you connected to Sears or to Kenmore?
No. We are an independent appliance repair company, not affiliated with, authorized by or endorsed by any manufacturer. Brand names and model numbers are used for identification only.
In more detail
What Kenmore repair actually involves in Miami
Ten appliances and only the badge in common
Every one of these was designed and built by a different company, or by one of several. That is unusual, and it is why this site is organized the way it is: the appliance tells you what it does, and the first three digits of its model number tell you how it does it.
What that means when something breaks
It means a symptom is a starting point rather than a diagnosis. ‘It will not drain’ sends us to a different first component on a Whirlpool-built machine than on an LG-built one, and the LG will usually have told you more about it. Naming the manufacturer on every page is not pedantry; it decides whether the visit was worth making.
What the climate does
Humidity puts more work through every defrost circuit and shortens the life of every door seal. Hard water scales heaters, ice plates and dishwasher jets ahead of the schedule any manual assumes. Salt air silts condensers. None of that is unique to this badge, but this badge covers the whole kitchen and the laundry room, so all of it applies somewhere on this page.
Before you decide to replace something
Parts for these appliances come from major manufacturers with real catalogs behind them, and that keeps repairs viable longer than the age of an appliance suggests. Where a part is genuinely gone we say so on the visit rather than after it, and we will tell you plainly when replacing the appliance is the better spend.
Which appliance, and the three digits on its plate.
With a line about the behavior, that is generally enough to name a likely part and the band its repair sits in.
This article is based on:
- Official manufacturer documentation
- Internal repair procedures
- Technician repair history
- Company quality standards