I bought the AEG Santo freestanding fridge freezer 6 1/2years ago which look really nice as a "feature" in the middle of my kitchen. After nearly 5 years the freezer packed up. Like others, I contacted John Lewis who were not interested because it was under a policy with Domestic and General. I was offered a "white freezer" by the insurance company and after several calls and complaints I was sent a replacement Arctis freezer. Since then, my Santo fridge also had problems which I had fixed. I am very unhappy that my Arctis freezer has now packed up and the insurance company have written it off - 2 freezer's in 61/2 years is appauling!!!! I am now dealing with Domestic and General to get a replacement freezer, but no thanks to AEG the new one is going to be taller than my fridge, which I'm being told is my "like for like" The fridge/freezer is a piece of rubbish - anyone considering buying one DON'T unless you have endless amounts of money to throw down the drain and like spending hours on the phone complaining.

Just like the other reviewers, our unit lasted 2 years and then broke down. Fan freezes over and soothing to do with drainage tube, thermal cut out and defrost heater. 2 days out of warranty. AEG did not want to know. Took out another repair policy. Too expensive to repair. So now we are about to go on holidays with a freezer getting warmer and warmer. AEG should be ashamed of themselves. They used to such a good make. We all make mistakes with the odd faulty product, but they lacked the decency to recall and help their loyal customers. I shall never buy AEG again.

I have just had exactly the same experience as the other reviewers. Like them I was prepared to pay over the odds for a 'good' name and have now paid the price with the same fault. The irony is that I bought the freezer because it was low energy and therefore good for the environment, and now I will have to add it to the pile of unusable rubbish littering the country!

In April 2008 decided to replace our old but reliable fridge and freezer with what we though were expensive high quality German made equipment. We bought an elegant stainless steel AEG Santo 86378 Fridge freezer and an Arctis 75278 upright freezer.
The Santo lasted 3 weeks and stopped refrigerating, it was replaced with a new one which lasted 3 months and also failed. It was repaired and so far is still working.
The Arctis lasted two and a half years (nicely out of the 2 year warranty - there seems to be a theme here. We inadvertently left the door slightly open and were alerted by the alarm that the temp had dropped from minus 18C to minus 11C. We closed the door and assumed it would continue to freeze, oh no! we watched whilst the temp went up until it slowly got to zero, by this time we had stuffed all the contents into our 15 year old John Lewis freezer we had kept in the garage because our faith in AEG was pretty low as a result of the Santo nonsense.
Having emptied the Artis it then proceeded to start freezing again and was soon happily gurgling away at - 18C. We did an experiment by leaving the door open again and lo, the bl**dy thing did the same again!
The lesson is, don't leave the door open unless you have a standby or all you frozen food will defrost.
We then discovered that they were made in Poland and Spain by Electrolux.
So much for our quality German engineered equipment!
Never again - AEG? (Absolutely Expensive Garbage)