I purchased at 36" Miele refrigerator. It's in the 500 pound range, as is SZ. They are delivering it into the kitchen via a special dolly as it cannot lie flat. They are removing and hauling away the old refrigerator. No charge for that.

However, I have had to hire a separate installer to uninstall the old one, move an electrical outlet in the wall, hook up the ice maker and level and install the new unit. He told me that the leveling can take quite a bit of time and is very important.

When I was considering SZ I was told that using one of their certified installers would give me an additional year of warranty.

I would not go through with a purchase of any expensive refrigerator delivered to the curb.

Yeah I think he was just trying to upsell me on the installation, he did mention the extra year of warranty. There is no haul away and I already have the plumbing and electrical roughed in for the SZ. I think I will give them a call and express my disagreement with this policy of theirs.

I used a certified SZ installer, worth every penny! There were quite a few adjustments that had to be made to get it installed perfectly. Not worth skimping on IMO, this is a heavy an expensive fridge!

A built in refrigerator is a challenging install even for an expert. Paying that fee is worth it for the hours and headaches saved. Especially if you'll need to rent the air sled and end up damaging the surrounding cabinets anyway.

Not surprising that "free" delivery is curbside. This is typical with freight items which this is.

What is surprising , is that the rest of your stuff is "white glove" delivery, but the fridge isn't. What's up with that ?

I have not heard of a built in dealer selling a fridge without deliver/install. And yes it's an xtra charge, and not really optional, but some contractors prefer to have their own people handle deliver and install. Which means you still pay, just to a different entity.

Don't get too upset - you are not being overcharged, it's just the sale wasn't present properly or explained very well.

Probably an Ebay sale for an open box that's from an unauthorized seller, and has no warranty anyway. No authorized seller will do anything less than a complete delivery and install, unless the GC of the job wants to deal with it. With the loss of the year of warranty, it's not worth it to most GC's to deal with. Plus, it's really not in most of them's skill set to do it, even though they might be pretty skilled at other aspects of the job.

I am having visions of Rococogurl waving goodbye to her old refrigerator, with tears of sheer joy running down her cheeks, as her refrigerator disappears down the driveway.

I and 3 of my friends installed my 42" built in SZ. It sat in the garage for a couple months while we waited for the kitchen to be finished in the new house. The cabinet guys had to install the panels in the garage. I put some forks on my tractor and drove it around to the back of the house and we scooted it in the slider off the dining room. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend it however I was having issues getting a certified installer to come out (very rural address), even if he did come out he wasn't going to put the fridge in, he would just go through his check list and make sure everything was level and plumb. The appliance guys delivered everything at the same time when I assumed the kitchen would be ready, it wasn't so it all sat in the garage for a while. If you think getting a built in fridge installed into the kitchen is hard try carrying a 36" BS RNB up a tall flight of stairs w/a 90 deg. corner in it. I wasn't there for that one but there was a lot of b*tching going on I hear. The fridge would not make it up the stairs, tractor came in handy to get it up the hill. Glad it's all over with. I didn't get the extra year warranty and it works great.

Built in refrigerators can be very difficult so my recommendation is to have the professionals do it. Whether it is your contractor or the dealer.

So funny, this happened to me too when I purchased from Expo. Unfortunately for me, they didn't warn me at the store. Instead, the delivery guys just left it on my front driveway! I just about panicked - my brand new beautiful SZ sitting outside in the weather. Luckily my DH and brother are very handy. They were able to install the fridge themselves and saved us some $. They are both engineers, so we joked afterwards, "Hey if this engineering thing doesn't work out, you might want to think about becoming SZ installers!"