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.
FIrst of all, if you’re going to criticize a product over the web get your shit straight. 1. The mantles are Amish made, period. 2. The company does not “stick people” with anything. THe extended warranty is an optional 36 dollars and is NOT required. And if you were literate enough to to read the entire ad, as opposed to just the title, you would see in plain english that the purchase of a mantle is required for the slim price of $298, and the heater to put inside of the mantle, normally a $249.00 value, is absolutely free. Thus, people, free heaters are being given away. No companies give away anything for free without at least some kind of purchase, so why should this company be the exception? Don’t be bitter towards a company that is running a special promotion just because you are too idiotic to undersand it.
I just stumbled upon this site. I was so amused by the posts that I had to respond…
Zeo: I used to work here. P-Codes are just one of many things this company does that are completely ridiculous. The inmates are running the asylum.
Vern: The man in the suit is not Napier. His name is Jim Speakman. He’s the biggest ass kisser in the world and a professional con man.
Riley: If you ever visit a real Amish store you will know that this CRAP was not made by the Amish. I have seen many of these up close and there are numerous problems that you would never see from a real Amish made product. I was stunned by how often I saw units with wheels that were put on crooked.
Wow…it looks like one of Chris Pugh’s job responsibilities is to scour The Internets for all of the negative things people have to say about the piece-of-shit company he works for. Simply google “WRME Rip Off”, “Heat Surge Rip Off”, “Arthur Middleton scam” and you will see Chris Pugh commenting on all of these consumer sites lauding his company’s reputation and quality customer service.
In 2007, when revenues were way down and they had too many employees in relation to the call volumes they were receiving, a massive lay-off was ordered. However, the company trumped up “justifiable” reasons for the terminations to limit their exposure to unemployment compensation. End result is that this agitated a lot of people in the Canton area and their reputation locally is still suffering to this day.