Appliance woes

OK, so Sadie and I bought a used fridge--a smaller-sized one--in late November with the help of our friend Dairou. It was a pretty old fridge that the patron of the business got in Europe (just about all electrical applicances and cars and computers and etc etc here are used and imported from overseas), but we thought it should probably work just fine, right? Absolutely wrong! After one day, the fridge overloaded our voltage capacity and all the electricity went out in our apartment. This is hindsight, however, for at the time we thought the problem was how the wires were set up in the apartment or something. Our caretaker had an electrician come to look at everything, and even he thought it was probably the fridge. But everyone else said, "no, it can't be the fridge." In any case, it had stopped working so Sadie and I brought it back to the store where we gave them a little money to fix it. Needed a new part -- whatever. We got it back and it did the same thing. This time we were absolutely certain it was the fridge's wiring. The telling evidence here is that when Sadie tried to move the thing to unplug it, she got shocked just by touching the top of it!! Needless to say, we took it back immediately, but the salesboy said he couldn't give us our money back. What? "No, the patron says we can only give you the money back if we sell this fridge at some time." *#&%*! OK, well, whatever. Fine. So we go back a couple weeks later. The fridge is still there. No takers. Then we come back just before Christmas and tell them that they can keep our money, our business, but just give us a TV or something. "I have to call my patron," says the salesboy. Again, ok, fine. I come back a few days later and he never called him. I make him call him right then and there. He comes back to say I must give them an extra $40 to take a TV. "WHAT?!?!? NO, no way. You're only doing this to me because I'm white." "No, no," says the salesboy. "My patron doesn't even know you are white." I say we're coming back with a Cameroonian friend the following week, which we do--two of them. We finally get the salesboy to call his patron again (note: a lie is caught here for he talks to his patron about the white man who had the problem with the fridge). He says we can go to the other shop where his patron is today. So we go there and after much negotiation, Sadie and I get a TV -- though we did have to put in an extra $30 for it. Our friends said the TV was worth what we paid for it, so all is good. Uhhh...not really. After 5 days of enjoying our new entertainment--which consists of 2 channels, one of which shows a South African channel called 'E'--and after getting sucked into WWE wrestling and bad Sunday night movies like 'XXX' and 'Exit Wounds' (though we did catch 'Tootsie' on Sunday morning!), the TV decided to stop working. Ugh. So I bring it back to the store just this past Wednesday where the patron's technician 'fixed' it: it worked for a day then kaput. So back I go again today, and now I'm waiting for the replacement TV... because, you know, the technician needs to 'look' at it before they hand it over to us. I'm hoping the third time is a charm, but I'm not holding my breath. Cross your fingers for us, alright?