I bought a new fridge/freezer not too long ago to replace a GE contractor special. (That is, the cheapest thing they could find that claimed to be a refrigerator.) The GE was just a piece of crap. The icemaker leaked, the freezer constantly had a slab of ice in the bottom of it, the icemaker would wear out the cam attached to the sensor bar within a year, etc. (That plus my experience with a GE dryer where the motor burned out in less than five years and a GE microwave that wouldn't heat anything straight out of the box means I'm never buying any GE anything ever again.)

Anyway, when I was searching for a new fridge/freezer, it became clear to me that there are only two design houses for consumer-grade fridges, one staffed with monkeys, the other staffed with chimps. Other than which of those design houses the "manufacturer" happened to choose, the only differences were in such vital aspects as shelf design.

To be clear, what I'm saying is that regardless of whether you buy a Frigidaire, a Whirlpool, a Kitchenaid, a Maytag, an Amana, a GE, a Jenn-Air, or a Hotpoint, you're getting the same refrigerator, and the only distinguishing features are aesthetic and support-related.

If you don't like those choices for whatever reason (such as, I don't know, the design sucks), your only option is to go to the high-end, and the prices there are outrageous. There is no middle ground. It's kinda ridiculous.

So I feel your pain. Well, I'd rather build my cabinets deeper than get a shallower fridge, but, in general, I get it. I find that there are a lot of product groups like that today. If you want a certain feature that shouldn't be overly pricey, you have to get it bundled with a dozen other features that you either don't care about or actively don't want, and end up paying a huge difference just to get that one feature, or go without that feature. In this case, considering the price difference, I'd go without the feature.

For the record, I got a Kenmore Elite french door model, which is apparently designed by LG, the chimp design house. I went with the Kenmore brand rather than the LG because the aesthetic was more American and less Korean.