Fridges not coping

[Suff]

Two days now the local Tesco fridges have been emptied and covers down with notices saying they are having a technical problem.

The technical problem being, as far as I can ascertain, that these machines have a maximum operating ambient temperature and the shop went over it. They told me in the fuel station (where the fridges were working), that it wasn't just Tesco but Lidl, Aldi and Sainsbury's.

They seen to work just fine in our supermarkets in France and we don't hit 40C very often either.

[TheOstrich]

That's an interesting point about maximum operating temperatures.
Our new Bosch fridge/freezer started making some horrendous vibrating noises this afternoon, when the heat was peaking just before the cold front crossed overhead.
Seems to have behaved itself since the temperature dropped.

[Suff]

Yes, some pumps are more capable but have to reach their limits of performance. The harder they work the more noise they make. Where fridges are sold into hotter climates, they have larger pumps with more capacity.

[JanB]

We have two fridges, one very old and a freezer and all work fine and can be a little noisier when it gets around 40C.

[Suff]

We have 3 fridges and 3 freezers. All but one was bought in France and the one bought in the UK is an in cabinet freezer and designed to work in a hotter environment with much less ventilation. As you would expect stuck in a kitchen cabinet. It was also quite expensive.

We don't get a lot of noise out of any of them even at 40C, but the largest fridge has fried the capacitors on the circuit board twice now. The first time we had the board replaced but it was so expensive I just let the light flicker as it has been doing for the last 5 years. One of these days I'll open it up get the capacitor specs and take my soldering iron and fix it.

[JoM]

I’ve just placed my Tesco order for delivery tomorrow, I’ll have to go elsewhere for fridge and freezer items though as it’s all showing as being unavailable. Fresh milk of all kinds are out of stock.
I went past Asda earlier though so called in there for milk for the week and they don’t seem to be having any problems. Tesco seems to shut down those departments every time we have a spell of hot weather. I remember a couple of years ago getting a £10 voucher attached to the delivery note as compensation for the lack of chilled items.