Appliance serial number age by brand.

Websites that claim to decode every brand’s serial number mostly repeat unofficial charts. This guide only reports what a manufacturer says on its own pages. Where a brand publishes a scheme, you get a decoder. Where it does not, you get the official page that explains where the serial label is and a plain statement that no formula was found.

How this is worked out

For each brand the entry was checked against the manufacturer’s own support pages on 2026-11-01. GE (including Café and Monogram) publishes a month and year letter chart. LG publishes a three-digit year and month pattern on its air conditioner help page. Whirlpool Corporation (Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Amana) refers owners to an age-finder tool; we could not open that tool, so no formula is shown. For Frigidaire and Electrolux, Samsung and Bosch we found pages about where to find the model and serial number but no page that decodes a date from it. “Not found” means we did not find it, not that none exists. Haier and Kenmore were not confirmed from an official page and are left out.

Worked example

You have a Samsung refrigerator serial number and want its age. Choose Samsung: the result says Samsung’s support pages explain where the label is but we found no official date code, and links to Samsung’s page. A decoder that gives a confident year for that serial number would be guessing. A GE serial number, by contrast, gets a decoder link because GE’s chart is public.

Mistakes people make

• Trusting third-party charts for brands without an official one. Forum charts often disagree with each other.
• Using one brand’s letters on another brand. The same letters mean different dates on different brands.
• Treating the purchase receipt as the build date. Warranty usually runs from purchase; the serial date shows when the unit was built.
• Reading the model number. The date code, where one exists, is in the serial number.

Who this is for, and what it does not cover

It is a map of what manufacturers publish, not a database of serial numbers. For a brand without a published code, the receipt, the owner’s manual print date or the manufacturer’s support team are the reliable routes.

Sources

Retrieved 2026-11-01. Each source was opened and read against the claim next to it.

• GE Appliances: How to Determine the Age or Manufacture Date: the GE chart.
• LG Canada: Locating model/serial number tag on air conditioners: the LG three-digit pattern.
• Maytag: Find your model and serial number: where the label is on Whirlpool Corporation brands.
• Frigidaire: Where can I find my model and serial number?: label locations.
• Samsung Canada: find the model and serial numbers: label locations.
• Bosch: How to identify your appliance and the model number (E-Nr.): E-Nr and FD number.