I’ve had several scam adverts recently for supposedly ground-breaking
air conditioners.
The ads are very professionally put together and could
easily fool a lot of people. There aren’t the usual typos and grammatical
errors and dubious email addresses. The air conditioners are said to be
super-effective. They’re about the size of a bread bin, you just plug them into
a power socket and hey presto, the room is cool in about 60 seconds.
A lot of Brits could be the ideal customers for them, with
UK temperatures soaring into the thirties Celsius, and few homes having air conditioning
already. Around 90 per cent of USA households have air conditioning, while the
figure for UK homes is only around 15 per cent. The USA has long ago assumed
scorching summers and provided for them.
But one golden rule for detecting scams is that if something
seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
Up to now our house hasn’t needed air conditioning because
it stays fairly cool in summer temperatures that are usually no higher than the
twenties Celsius. But with climate breakdown pushing temperatures up, air
conditioning might become a necessity in a few years’ time.
Funny that!
ReplyDeleteWe stayed at an Airbnb in Missouri In May and it was rather warm when we got there. As soon as we got inside, we realized it was too warm and started looking for the controls for the air-conditioning. Couldn’t find them.
Looked at the listing for the Airbnb and, sure enough, it was supposed to include air-conditioning. However, there was none.
What they thought was air-conditioning was just a super fancy fan that just blew the air around inside whatever room it was in.
We contacted the host and she, after we explained what we had, called her maintenance guy to install a window air conditioner. (That was another story.)
An air conditioner has to have some way to “dump“ the heat outside somehow. A box that just sits on a table or in a corner of a room can’t do that.
To be fair, this was a relatively new Airbnb listing and the four or so previous customers had been there on days that were much, much cooler so there would have been no need for air-conditioning.
Mike: That's not the first time an Airbnb listing hasn't been as advertised! Must have spoilt your holiday rather. And what's the story about the window air conditioner?
DeleteThe maintenance guy didn't show as promised. The weather cooled off. He did eventually show up, but, by then the weather was cooler.
DeleteThis AirBnB is in Hamilton, Missouri. Much of the downtown commerce is devoted to the quilting world. Missouri Star Quilting owns 26 buildings with 450 employees and numerous quilt and fabric related stores and shops. Missouri Star is the largest employer in the county.
Our trip there was a "Mother's Day" trip. Karen is an avid quilter and has a quilting blog with a lot of followers. The Airbnb was just 1 block off of the center of town and only a couple of blocks from a grocery store.
An air conditioner that doesn't connect to the outdoors is called a fan.
ReplyDeleteLinda
Linda: Indeed, and a fan doesn't help much when the temperature is sky high.
DeleteMy house is pretty well behaved in hot weather so long as I keep certain doors closed and others open, but this 30º+ weather is almost thwarting my efforts.
ReplyDeleteI think our weather will become increasingly erratic and it'll become difficult to predict what we need and when. I reckon most people have already forgotten how flipping cold it was throughout most of May until the Bank Holiday spike - about a week after that I lit my wood burner again, which I'd never done before at that time in the year. It's all going crazy.
Sx
Ms Scarlet: English weather is getting especially erratic, with temperatures in the thirties as you say. Temperatures in Northern Ireland tend to stay in the twenties. People in England will continue to suffer because you can't just install air conditioning everywhere overnight.
DeleteRather than believe a scam of "they don't want you to know" and "(hurry-hurry) to buy now," it would be reasonable to just go to the store and ask someone.
ReplyDeleteIn North America a few years back, forgotten now of course, there was a scam of a small AC thing that supposedly had been invented by a Toronto engineering student who had brought the device into his classroom to cool the room. I was tempted to phone the student newspaper and tease them about their fellow student being famous.
Sean: I think it's the same bogus air conditioner as the one in the adverts I've been receiving.
DeleteIt's physically reasonable for a device to store the result of a process that decreases entropy locally in the device. Such a device, plugged in outdoors, can then be brought indoors to cool a room for an hour or so. Buy a 12-pack; and rotate one indoors every hour.
ReplyDeleteRick: Well, I don't know anything about that. Opening doors and windows to let in fresh air works okay for us.
DeleteThere are so many scammers out there, it's sad that so many people are duped.
ReplyDeleteMary: It is. And it's sad that now we all have to be so sceptical and distrusting and wondering if something's actually true or not.
DeleteI see those ads all of the time. Right. We have central air but our electricity cost has soared so I use it only when I feel there is no choice. I do keep the house closed up to keep the humidity outside.
ReplyDeleteSandra: Electricity is expensive here as well, and the government does little to keep the cost down.
DeleteYes, Nick, I keep seeing those ads on YouTube programs and skip right over them because as you said if something seems too good to be true, it's usually not. That said, there is AC in our mill apt but we use stand fans and open the windows when it's not unbearably hot. This week, it's another hot streak so we will use both AC and fans.
ReplyDeleteBeatrice: These bogus air conditioner ads seem to be everywhere. I guess enough people respond to them to rake in a lot of money.
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