Cool, it ain't...
Written: May 26 '05
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Pros: Price is good, specs are good.
Cons: Either the unit or its packaging is so poorly engineered that it can't survive shipping
The Bottom Line: I won't be buying another Fedders OR WalMart product.
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| caradoc's Full Review: Fedders A6V12S2A Thru-Wall/Window Air Conditioner |
I've got a lot of computer equipment in here, so I've been using a window-mounted air conditioner to supplement the house air conditioning. When we go out, the thermostat for the house will allow the temperature to go up while my server room/home office stays nice and cool.
We replaced all of our windows and doors before the summer started, and the old horizontal-mount A/C unit simply wouldn't fit into the new layout.
After shopping around, I settled on the Fedders Vertical Chassis 12,000 BTU Air Conditioner. It met all of my requirements, looked like it would fit into the window nicely, and had an available "high window kit" to fill in the space that would otherwise be left open because my new window is taller than the regular window kit allows.
The unit includes a digital thermostat and a remote control. Temperature adjustment is accomplished by pushing an up arrow to increase the temperature, or a down arrow to decrease it. The digital readout can be adjusted to either Fahrenheit or Celsius, and a timer can be set to turn the unit on or off. There is also an "Energy Saver" mode that reduces the fan speed when it's not actively cooling the room.
I ordered from WalMart online. This, in retrospect, would prove to be a mistake.
I noticed some problems stemming from the install. The included mounting bracket isn't quite heavy-duty enough to hold the air conditioner if there's *anything* abnormal about your location. In my case, there's a brick sill under the outside of the window, and so I had to adjust the bracket to its most extreme limit, and it immediately bent as I tried to center the air conditioner on it.
Then I turned it on. It put out nicely cool air, but made an odd ticking or clicking sound at irregular intervals. I wrote that off to the unit being new, and thought the noise might "go away" once it had run for a bit.
Then the circuit breaker tripped. I started looking for the culprit, and found that the air conditioner was drawing a lot more amperage than I'd consider normal, as if it were laboring very hard.
So, I took a look through the side vents with a flashlight and a small mirror to see if maybe a strip of packing tape or something was binding the fan that blows air over the coils.
No tape. Instead, I found a shattered plastic fan shroud. It looked an awful lot like someone had dropped it somewhere in shipping, and the amount of play in the fan shaft let it hit the shroud - hard.
I called WalMart Online's customer service, and they recommended I take it to a local WalMart to swap it.
That would have been a good idea, except that WalMart stores do not carry this unit. It's a web-only product, or so I was told by a store manager after calling several local stores and being told "Oh, we don't have those in yet, but try that other store over there..."
So I returned the unit to the local store, took a refund via a WalMart gift card, and reordered the unit.
Three days later, the new unit arrived. Same story. Shattered fan shroud, fan won't spin.
Tonight, I returned the unit to the local WalMart again and took the cash refund so I can go buy a different unit somewhere else, and from a vendor and manufacturer that both understand how to build items that will survive shipping, or at least package items so that they will survive shipping.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 368
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Epinions.com ID:
caradoc
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Member: John Groseclose
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
Reviews written: 182
Trusted by: 133 members
About Me:
System admin, technology addict, knife thrower, and dog "caregiver."
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