We bought one of these from the club back in late July. It looked very nice and was exactly what we were looking for and price seemed reasonable.
After getting it home we noticed the interior had a HORRIBLE very strong toxic smell. If you have ever had the misfortune of knowing what an electrical fire smells like, that was how this thing smelled, except nothing was actually burning (that I know of).
We thought that the smell would go away over time, but it did not. We initially had put bottled water and canned sodas in there and after a short time we realized that the smell had penetrated into the water and got all over the cans. It was so bad that we took everything out and placed the cans and bottles into the large Sam's bags that we use to carry groceries in, intending to bring them upstairs to wash them off. We opened the door and spent countless hours over a period of weeks wiping the interior down with soapy water to no avail. When I went to take the sodas up to wash them I realized that the smell from the cans had transferred to the bag and was so strong it took many days to dissipate (this was with them just sitting inside the open bag). Even the room where the fridge was located had the smell.
We tried leaving the door open for several weeks thinking it would air out and be ok, and it did seem to get better, but as soon as we closed the door and plugged it back in the smell returned, strong as ever.
Finally, in October, we were back in the club and noticed they still had these on display, so I wondered if the display model had that same smell; I opened the door and noticed it did not. I thought, ok, maybe ours was an anomaly, so we decided to buy another one while we were there, thinking we would just return the bad one.
Got the new one home and it had the same bad smell as the first one, although not quite as strong (at first.) We plugged that one in, leaving it empty and the next day there was the strong smell in that one as well.
At that point, we decided to give up and took both of them back for a refund. It is really a shame because the unit looks beautiful and would have been perfect, had it not been for the toxic smell. I mean, no point in putting drinks in there to have them ruined.
We ended up purchasing an Insignia brand one from another well-known big box store that is similar but has no bad smell at all and works great. It was twice the price of this one, but luckily was on sale for $100 off, so that made it only $70 more.
I'm not sure what the deal is with the smell, and I assume that not every one of these has this problem as it appears there are many who are happy with it. We, unfortunately were 2 for 2 and simply did not want to try a third.