Product review (4 stars): Expensive, but competitively priced and was just what I needed
The water dispenser on my 5-year-old Whirlpool Gold refrigerator suddenly began having problems one day. The water slowed to a trickle. At first I thought it might be the filter, which was due to be changed, but after swapping in a new filter, the problem was worse. I was getting no flow at all. After watching a few YouTube videos, I thought the issue might be a frozen water line. I opened the freezer door for awhile (I put heavy cardboard over the opening to keep the contents as cold as possible) to allow the line to defrost, if that was, in fact, the problem. That yielded no results. I also verified that the ice maker was not making ice. I then reached out to Whirlpool - they were very responsive over Twitter, and even gave me a call, but they seemed totally clueless with little to offer other than reading canned text from a customer service rep manual (clearly those I was dealing with had little or no plumbing experience). More research led me to conclude that it might be the water filter housing. It was a bit of a gamble as I wasn't certain I'd be able to return this, but if it worked, it would save me from paying $250+ for a repair guy. I decided to go for it, and I'm glad I did. Replacing the water filter housing completely solved the problem.

A quick note if you are wondering if you can tackle this repair (this has nothing to do with the overall value of the part itself). I am NOT a plumber. And, unfortunately, when I followed the YouTube videos I found, my fridge proved to be far more of a challenge. There was not way to remove the water lines from the front of the fridge. I had to remove the cardboard backing on the back of the fridge, then remove a clamp that held the water lines in place. This allowed me the slack in the water line that I needed (with the help of my 10-year-old daughter gently pushing on the line from the back while I tackled it on the front of the fridge) to remove the old housing and install the new one. Despite these challenges, and my lack of plumbing experience, it proved to be a fairly easy installation. I ended up with a working fridge, saved a bunch of money, and felt a little more confident about the household projects I could take on (not sure if that is a good thing or not)!

This earns a solid four stars for being the right part for my fridge and solving the problem I was having. It's been over a month now and so far, so good. I took away one star because I honestly can't fathom how vendors justify charging such a ridiculously high price for this part. I can't imagine them costing more than $5 - $10 at most to manufacture (if that). That said, I got a better price here at Amazon.com than I could find anywhere else.