Resolution Layer Case Study · Read & Diagnose
Refrigerators.
A catalog read across the complete refrigerator category of a major-appliance retailer — where the numbers that decide whether a fridge fits the kitchen, and the outlet, have to be right.
This is a real EKOM catalog analysis, with the client's identity removed. The client is a major-appliance retailer that sells, delivers and installs the refrigerators it lists. EKOM read one complete category of its public catalog — every refrigerator — from the product pages and the structured data behind them, and flagged 172 items. 127 are reported here as actionable catalog defects. Six were withdrawn, most of them as EKOM's own artifacts or overturned on checking; the rest were held back at low confidence or because the meaning of a field was not settled. None is in any count below.
A refrigerator is chosen by three sets of numbers. Will it fit the opening — height, width, depth, and the depth with the doors open. Will it hold what the household buys — total capacity, and how it splits between fresh food and freezer. And will the kitchen power it — the volts, amps and watts that say whether the outlet behind the old fridge will carry the new one. In a showroom a salesperson answers those questions. Online, the record answers them first.
In most categories a wrong field costs a click. Here it costs a fridge that does not fit the opening, or an electrical plan built on a number that describes the wall, not the appliance.
Manufacturer names are not attached to individual defects here, because on a retailer's catalog a manufacturer, model and defect together can identify the retailer. Model numbers, prices and verbatim field values have been removed or generalized; counts and ratios are exact.
What's inside
- At a glance — the severity split, where the findings concentrate, and how the read was done.
- The electrical fields — one label holding two different numbers, and five ways it goes wrong.
- The receipts — capacities that cannot add up, copy written for another model, and the layer machines read.
- Filled in is not the same as right — why most of this never shows up on a fill-rate report.
- Where it traces back, and what's next — the six mechanisms most of these findings collapse into, and the order to fix in.
Nothing was supplied and no internal system was touched. Everything below was read from the retailer's public product pages.
127
Actionable findings
(172 flagged)
Where the 127 concentrate
Theme
What it is
Findings
Filter fields
Blank, off-vocabulary or misfiled values
32
Electrical specifications
A circuit rating read as a draw; volts and amps swapped
17
Capacities and compartments
Parts larger than the whole
11
Copy for another product
Overviews written for a different model
11
Siblings that disagree
One finish or hinge unlike its twin
11
Descriptions and structured data
Placeholders; oversized machine-readable dimensions
13
Claims, records and the rest
Warnings, labels, missing sections, names, part numbers, open-box
32
How EKOM read this catalog
1
Read
Every refrigerator page, as a shopper, a search engine or an assistant receives it — no file handoff, no credentials, no integration.
The specification table and the page's structured data, captured field by field.
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2
Profile
Infer what each field is for from how the category itself uses it, then hold every model to that.
One row per model number: one physical appliance, one set of numbers.
→
3
Analyze
Surface defects, rate severity, and bind each one to the models and values behind it.
127 findings, 13 themes, 6 causes.
Machine-surfaced signals from a cold read, not a verified defect list. Some will prove intentional, which is why each is tied to the values behind it. Headline values were re-read on the live pages before this was written.
One label, two different numbers.
The lead finding is electrical. The wattage field is where a shopper checks what a refrigerator will ask of the kitchen's wiring — and on most of the pages that fill it, it holds the rating of the circuit instead.
Critical · Electrical specifications
167 of the 258 wattages published describe the wall circuit, not the refrigerator.
They cluster on three values: 1,650, 1,725 and 1,800 watts. Those are 15 amps at 110, 115 and 120 volts — the household circuit a refrigerator is plugged into, which manufacturers state as a supply requirement, not a draw. The same values recur across unrelated brands and sizes, from compact units to full-size models.
Field, one compact fridge
What the page says
Verdict
Voltage
the US standard
correct
Amperage
1 amp — about 115 watts
plausible
Wattage
1,725 watts
the 15-amp circuit
The contradiction needs no outside knowledge. Volts times amps is watts, and all three sit in adjacent rows on the same page — fifteen times apart.
Critical · Electrical specifications
Voltage and amperage transposed.
Two refrigerators publish a single- or double-digit voltage beside an amperage of 115 — the size of a whole home's electrical service. Read the other way round, both pages make sense.
These are the numbers a customer checks against the outlet behind the old fridge, and the ones an assistant repeats when asked whether a model needs its own circuit. A shopper who reads 1,725 watts on a compact fridge can reasonably conclude it will not share a circuit with anything else; one who reads 1 amp beside it has two answers and no way to choose.
Wrong in five different ways.
A single consistent error could be corrected with one rule. This one cannot: the electrical fields are wrong in several directions at once — too high, transposed, and in the wrong unit.
What is wrong
How it shows
How many
Wattage is the circuit
Clustered on 15 amps at 110, 115 and 120 volts
167 of 258
Wattage contradicts volts × amps
Off by more than three times, in both directions
46 of 258
Cord length in inches, labelled feet
Cords of five to six-and-a-half feet published as sixty-odd and seventy-odd "feet"
24 of 397
Voltage off the US standard
Old nominal values, another country's supply voltage, and one dropped digit
22
Voltage and amperage swapped
An amperage of 115
2
Four full-size refrigerators from two premium brands publish a supply voltage used in Latin America, not in the United States — the rest of both brands' freestanding lines read 115 or 120 volts. It reads like a value carried over from a record written for another market.
The counts overlap, so they are not added together. They are the analyst's recount across the whole category rather than the analysis's first pass, which read in batches and saw only part of each pattern.
One apparent electrical defect was withdrawn. The analysis flagged a family of large refrigerators for listing about 4 amps where others list 15. The live pages and an independent retailer's listing both give 4 — likely the real draw, with the 15 on other models being the circuit again. The amperage field, in other words, holds two quantities too, and the study treats that as a question for the business rather than an error to count.
Capacities, and copy for another model.
A refrigerator's capacity is published three times: total, fresh food and freezer. The parts cannot be larger than the whole, and a model with no freezer has no freezer capacity. On eleven findings, ten of them critical, the arithmetic fails in the record itself.
Model
What the page says
Why it cannot be
A 36-inch side-by-side
A freezer a tenth of a cubic foot larger than the whole refrigerator
part > whole
A 36-inch French door
Fresh food of 1 cubic foot, beside a total and freezer that leave 16
does not sum
A compact
Total, fresh food and freezer all the same number
each part = whole
Three freezerless models
A freezer capacity, in one case equal to the total
no freezer
Not counted · A schema question
Four-door refrigerators do not add up either — and that is the schema, not the data.
The mismatch rate is 2.3% on two-door units and 69.2% on four-door units. A four-door model has a convertible middle drawer that is neither fresh food nor freezer, and the record has no field for it. The fix is a third compartment field, not a correction to the two that exist.
Critical · Copy that describes a different product
Ten refrigerators open their overview as a 23 cu. ft. side-by-side.
A counter-depth French door, opened to its product overview, describes a side-by-side with wire freezer shelves and a slide-out basket. Nine other models from the same manufacturer share it. Elsewhere: a stainless model written up in a glass finish, a unit with no water dispenser described with one, a residential fridge whose copy opens with industrial refrigeration. With one exception, the wrong text is always a real neighbour's.
Every product page also carries a structured description written for software — the schema.org Product record that search engines and AI shopping assistants read instead of the page. On this catalog, that layer is where the record is weakest.
What the structured record holds
How widespread
Severity
Escaped page markup and stylesheet references where the description should be
Four in five refrigerators
recount
A one-line sentence template naming the product and the store, as the whole description
At least 48
critical
Dimensions about four inches larger than the specification table on every side
A dozen models of one brand, several of another
critical
No structured dimensions at all
At least 46
high
An assistant asked for a refrigerator that fits a 36-inch opening reads a width close to 40 inches in the structured record, and rules out a model the specification table says is under 36.
Behind it, the manufacturers' own content is largely missing: the pages are set up to receive syndicated manufacturer content, and on four in five refrigerators none arrives. Where it does not, the placeholder and the page markup are what fill the gap.
Text that carries a claim
Some fields carry a warning, a certification or a compatibility promise. Two models carry a California Prop 65 warning whose hazard text has been replaced by the word "Yes". Two carry "not ENERGY STAR" in the table while their own copy is headed "ENERGY STAR Certified". Heavily reviewed models have every manual and guide field blank — including the Energy Guide, which federal labeling rules require websites advertising refrigerators to show for each model. And one refrigerator lists compatibility with a competing manufacturer's smart-home platform.
Filled in is not the same as right.
One idea about the findings rather than more findings — because it explains why most of this would never appear on a fill-rate report.
Most of what this study found is not blank. The wattage on the compact fridge is filled in. The freezer capacity on the side-by-side is filled in. The structured height is filled in, and so is the ENERGY STAR field. A completeness check — the instrument most catalogs are measured with — scores every one of those fields at a hundred percent, and every one of them gives the wrong answer.
Across the category · The dash
31,068 cells hold a literal dash.
Across 90 specification columns, a "-" stands in both for "none" and for "nobody filled this in". A dash in freezer capacity on a freezerless model is an answer; the same dash in door swing on a French door is a gap. A filter, a feed or an assistant cannot tell them apart — and a completeness check counts both as filled.
What came back clean
A study that only lists defects is not measuring anything. Depth without the door, product depth and depth with the door open should rise in that order; across more than a thousand models that publish them, four exceptions were found. All but 22 of the voltages published sit on 115 or 120 volts. And the specification table itself is deep — named sections for dimensions, cutout, packaging and warranty, with fields many listings leave out. That depth is why most of the corrections here are transformations, not research.
127 findings sounds like 127 problems. Most of them collapse into six upstream mechanisms — and a mechanism can be fixed once and stopped from recurring. Each tell below is a pattern in the data; the mechanism is EKOM's reading of it.
A circuit value written in as a default
The tell: 1,725 watts repeats across unrelated brands and sizes, beside amperages that cannot produce it. A single mistake does not recur like that; a default filled in at import does.
Values landing in the neighbouring field or unit
The tell: the wrong value is the right value one field over — volts in the amps row, the air filter in the water-filter row, width in the depth slot, inches in a column labelled feet.
Copy assigned by family, not by model
The tell: ten models share one overview; a stainless unit is written up in another finish; a model quotes its sibling's capacity.
A machine layer built from a different source
The tell: the structured record disagrees with the visible page — dimensions inches larger, a description made of markup, and a sentence template wherever no content arrived.
Every finish and hinge keyed as its own record
The tell: siblings that are one physical appliance disagree on door lock, defrost, shelves and installation type — usually one variant against its twin or the rest.
A schema with no place for the answer
The tell: true facts with no field — a four-door's convertible zone, an open-box unit's condition, the difference between "none" and "unknown".
Correcting 167 wattages by hand corrects 167 pages. Correcting what the wattage field is fed corrects those and every refrigerator added next — and in an appliance catalog, new models arrive every season through the same import.
An appliance retailer that delivers and installs what it sells carries the cost of a wrong record at the end of the sale, not the beginning. A shopper who reads 1,725 watts on a compact fridge may pass on it, or plan wiring it does not need. A shopper comparing capacities is shown a freezer larger than the refrigerator it sits in. A counter-depth French door is described as a side-by-side. Each is a question for the sales floor, a call to customer service, or a delivery that does not go in.
A second clock runs underneath. The customer comparing refrigerators increasingly starts with an assistant rather than a search box, and an assistant does not read the overview first. It reads the structured record: the dimensions, the capacity, the electrical supply, the certification. On this catalog it finds dimensions inches larger than the fridge, page code where a description should be, and a placeholder where the manufacturer's copy never arrived. Those are not rankings to trade off. They are wrong answers, and they do not correct themselves.
None of it is a failure of effort. The specification table is richer than most, and the right answer usually sits somewhere on the same page or on a sibling. The record is holding the right answers in the wrong fields — which is a problem that can be fixed once.
Three moves, in order. The first needs no new data at all — and the correction that looks most mechanical deliberately waits.
This pass read and diagnosed. The same structural understanding powers what follows — turning a diagnosed catalog into one a customer, and an assistant, can choose from with confidence.
1 · Apply the corrections the record already answers for itself
Rebuild the structured dimensions from the page's own specification table. Transpose the swapped volts and amps, convert the cords recorded in inches, and bring filter values onto the category's own vocabulary from the siblings that already state them. Approved as patterns, not product by product.
2 · Settle the questions that gate the rest — starting with what the electrical fields mean
Moving 167 circuit ratings out of the wattage field looks mechanical, and it waits: the amperage field holds two quantities as well, and one definition has to come from inside the business first. So do a third compartment field for four-door models, a condition field for open-box units, the approved warning text, and why most refrigerators receive no manufacturer content.
3 · Hold the line at intake
Keep ongoing intelligence where manufacturer data meets the retailer's own records, so the next circuit rating written into a wattage field is caught as it lands rather than found later by a customer planning around it.
This is how EKOM moves a catalog from insight to impact —
and keeps every specification reading right as the business grows.