Fridge Warm, Freezer Cold? Here's What's Actually Wrong

Your fridge stopped cooling and someone's already saying "compressor." Before that number lands on your kitchen table — anywhere from $350 to $1,500 — watch this. A large share of "bad compressor" calls are actually a failed start relay ($20–$50 part), dirty condenser coils ($0 to clean yourself), or a fan motor fault that runs about $400 professionally. Hollis Boone spent thirty years in the service van. He walks every cheap check in order, explains the one symptom that tells you it is NOT the compressor before anyone opens a panel, and gives you the exact words to say before any quote gets written down. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold Open — The Compressor Quote 0:43 Meet Hollis 1:14 How Your Fridge Actually Keeps Things Cold 2:33 Check 1: Freezer vs. Fridge Temperature (The Free Reframe) 3:47 Check 2: Condenser Coils — The $0 Fix 5:03 Check 3: The Start Relay 6:19 Check 4: Evaporator and Condenser Fan Motors 7:32 The Compressor — And the Hard Wall 8:51 The Say-This Script 9:43 The House Call — A Case I'm Seeing 11:45 Recap — What You Can Do Right Now 13:28 The Moral 14:10 Outro The Appliance Survival Playbook — symptoms, cheap checks, and fair-price tables for the machines in your house: hollisboonerepairs.com Have an appliance giving you trouble? Drop the brand, age, and what it's doing in the comments — first name and state is all I need. Every week I take a few on The House Call.