I saw a two-page ad in the Rocky Mountain News this week about some new miracle heater called the ‘Amish Heat Surge‘ and it fell into the category of things that sounded to me to be ‘just a little fishy’. Later I saw a commercial for the same product. Sure enough, after doing some calculations, I figured out that this is just a scam to overcharge people for a cheap electric heater made in China. Searching the Internet, I found a few unhappy customers who fell for it. Even though the heaters are ‘free’, you pay $298 for the ‘Amish authentic wood mantles’ that enclose them. In reality, there’s no reason to wrap an electric heater with a wooden box or mantle. It also has some sort of fake fire effect. Oh, and shipping costs $50 EACH. And they’ll stick you with an extended warranty for $28 each. So for around $770, you’d get a pair of heaters that do the same thing as a pair of $27 electric heaters you can pick up at Wal-Mart.
A 5,119 BTU/hr heater generates about 1/20th the heat produced by a household furnace. It will draw 1.5 kW. For every hour this thing runs, it will cost about $.15 in electricity, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but over a 730 hour month, that adds up to an extra $108 on your electric bill. Electric resistive heat is the most expensive way to heat a house. It costs about twice as much per BTU as natural gas heat. Just to put it in another perspective, a 2,100 sq. ft. house in my home state of Colorado uses about 6 therms of natural gas a day in the coldest winter months. At the current gas price of $1.20 per therm, a typical gas bill is $216/month during the winter months. To heat your house to the same temperature with this electric heater, you’d need to have 5 of these heaters operating at the high setting 24 hours a day. The additional monthly charges on your electric bill for just the heaters would be $540!
The ad talks about only using it to heat zones, which can save on your heating bill, of course, but only at the expense of having some of the rooms in your home being uncomfortably chilly. And you can’t really completely turn off your central furnace without the risk of pipes freezing. In other words, if you put a heater like this in the room that has your furnace’s thermostat, and thus your furnace never comes on, you may freeze pipes in a remote part of the house.
The ad is full of high pressure sales nonsense, such as requiring a special savings code that expires in 48 hours, or you’d otherwise pay $587 each! There is a limit of 2 per household and they need to ‘turn away dealers’ because they can’t keep up with demand.
If you’re one of the people reading this article who bought an Amish Heat Surge heater, please note that I mean no disrespect to you. I’m just tired of con artists using slick advertising to suck people into buying things that aren’t worth a fraction of the sales price.
We’re an established company with millions of satisfied customers whose focus is to exceed customer expectations.
To accomplish this, along with other successful methods, we’ve set up a Web site to share the facts about our company at http://heatsurge.wordpress.com to address any questions or concerns you may have.
Hi Lee,
I also question the validity of these ‘new world’ Amish shown. Don’t most Amish shy away from being photographed? And why not say that it’s a Chinese heater when the Amish don’t use electricity? I guess people need an Amish 101 course and I hope they don’t buy.
A Quaker in Pennsylvania
The first comment on this blog entry was left within a 2 hours of my posting it by a representative of the company. My guess is that he is a PR professional hired by the company and he uses tools like Google Alerts to respond quickly to criticisms that are springing up in the blogosphere about the company’s business practices.
Any company that has the wherewithal to take out full page spreads in major newspapers isn’t going to sit by idly and let a few bloggers get in the way.
My objection to the company is that it uses deceptive advertising practices such as:
1. Implied scarcity of the product (and then trying to sell 2 to each customer).
2. Misrepresenting the potential for energy savings.
3. Significantly overcharging for the heater based on the price of products that perform the same function.
4. Associating the company with the Amish in an effort to coopt attributes like honesty, hard work, integrity, and high quality workmanship.
5. Inducing the customer to act quickly with a “discount code” that expires in 48 hours.
6. Upselling an extended warranty.
7. Implying that UL certification for a heater is ‘coveted’. No legitimate company would sell a heater in the U.S. without it.
8. Implying that customers are getting something for ‘free’, when free means spending a minimum of $385.
I thought that this kind of nonsense went out in the 1970’s when the TV Guide was full of miracle products that didn’t live up to their advertising.
I figured that the Internet would help undo this tendency of over-the-top advertising claims, but I can see that even the Internet can be used for similar chicanery like setting up fake blogs.
I have no commercial interest in writing about this heater or the company. My only goal is to point out the misleading advertising statements and let potential customers draw their own conclusions.