There is foam wrapping on the coil of my new counter-top fridge, should I remove it?

Do you mean foam, like styrofoam, that is taped on?

Yes, take that off. it’s there to protect the coils from being damaged as the fridge was being moved and installed. In fact, keeping it on will cause the coils to overheat – the coils act as a radiator and need air to dissipate the heat that the compressor creates.

Bottom line – remove the foam.

Read the instruction manual before plugging the fridge in.

Almost certainly you should remove the material around the coils, but why take the chance when you can know for sure with a 2 minute look at the booklet?

@elbanditoroso Thanks. It was attached with zip-ties, which is why I was unsure if it was packing material or something that helped the fridge function. I had removed it initially, but the fridge didn’t work, so I thought perhaps I shouldn’t have removed it.

It’s a low-end fridge, and I’m in another country than my country of origin, and the directions are in literally 15 different languages, and not very complete @ibstubro. I had little clarity of what action to take after reading the directions several times.

Yeah, @Megan64, if you’d included the brand of the fridge we probably could have given you a definitive answer much sooner.
All those manuals are available on-line, we could have looked for ourselves. Otherwise, if you hold the manual, have the fridge in front of you, and you’re still uncertain, many will hesitate to give you long-distance, sight-unseen direction.

Is the fridge still not working?

@ibstubro It’s a Proline from Darty. It’s still not working, for some unknown reason, but probably because it’s cheap – the cheapest, in fact. It got cold, and then we put already cold food in it (not too much), and then it never got cold again.

Megan are you going to return it?

It’s very well rated, @Megan64.
Asa @jca asks, are you able to return it?

There is someone here fixing it now. It has a 3 year warranty on it, so I hope we will be able to enjoy it as much as those other folks. Will keep you posted. Thanks!

It looks like the fridge was a dud. They will be replacing it, free of charge.

Excellent, @Megan64!
No wonder it was highly rated. There’s no way they would send people to my house for warranty work on a small appliance in the Midwest, USA.

The new one works like a dream… Thanks @ibstubro

Great news, @Megan64. Have cold one for us!