Three hundred and forty kilograms of steel, glass, copper and insulation are rendered scrap by the failure of a component roughly the size of a paperback. This is not a defect. The refrigerator performed as designed for four years. The design is the case.

The control board sits inside the cabinet wall, behind injected structural foam. Removing it requires destroying the foam. Destroying the foam ends the cabinet. Two authorised technicians told us the same thing in near-identical words: the repair is technically possible and commercially insane.

We priced the alternative. Relocating the board to a serviceable rear bay adds an estimated $6 to $11 per unit at volume, most of it in wiring harness. That is the entire distance between a repairable appliance and a landfill appointment.

The case remains under investigation because we are still trying to establish whether the placement was a thermal decision that later became a serviceability decision. If it turns out there is a legitimate engineering reason, we will say so on this page, in this typeface, at this size.