It happened again. I was contentedly reading my NY Post sports section when I was confronted by a familiar, official looking two-page add. 
A photo of a lab coated, glove-wearing dude (obviously not a Chinese engineer) holding up a penny, over the headline, “Public staying cool for just pennies” – no doubt signifying my savings to come. Reading further I found that a free giveaway was launching a breakthrough in home cooling technology. Upon further reading, I found that if I ordered a unit within the next 24 hours I’d get a second $298 (plus shipping – they always get you on shipping) Cool Surge, for free. A rolling air cooler that contains no nasty freon, needs no vents and rolls from room-to-room like you mother-in-law. Hand me the phone?
Okay, not so fast. We had a lot of discussion and complaints on AltCon about this company’s other piece of questionable technology, also created by those “genius” engineers off the coast of China (Taiwan?), The Heat Surge Roll & Glow Heater. Like the Heat Surge, the Cool Surge Portable Cooler professes to be an energy saving breakthrough. The Cool Surge is proclaimed to use the same amount of power as a 60 watt bulb and 96% less energy than a traditional air conditioner, while cooling the average sized room “all day and night”. If you read all the marketing blather in the ad you sort of find (these marketing guys are very adept at obfuscation) that the Cool Surge comes with 2 sets of reusable “glacier blocks” which provide 8 hours of cooling power, presumably 4 hours per set of glacier blocks. Basically the same cooling effect can be achieved by having a fan blow over a block of ice.
One teensy problem with the energy use estimates. They don’t include the heat and energy used and expelled into you home by your refrigerator constantly refreezing those “glacier blocks” all the time. They even have the audacity to call this “eco-friendly”. Any of you electricians or mathemeticians willing to run the numbers on the energy used in this endeavor can please chime in. The ad even has a vibrantly color-coded map of the USA dividing the country into 3 zones, Sizzling, Scorching and Scalding (I don’t recall seeing these desiganations on the Weather Channel). All very “global warming”. It also appears that the Cool Surge has been around for a while. Buyer beware.
Oh, this just in, Consumer Reports found the unit to provide “negligible cooling.” Save your money.
RSS
Please cancel my order # 97585; I have directed my credit card Co. Not to accept any & all charges that you send to them. If you have any? please advise—– or tel. —— Thank you Jim 6-5-09
Hi Jim,
We’ve tried to contact you via email. We do not rep or recommend Cool Surge in any way, shape or form. Contact them directly to cancel your order.
@ coolsurge.com
Cool Surge – total scam. If you believe that you can cool down your apartment by opening the fridge door this product is for you.
I was on the verge of giving the coolsurge telemarketer my credit card number but just had a bad feeling about the product. The telemarketer was just too eager in pushing me for my card number. I even asked him if he had a coolsurge himself since he kept reitterating how great it was and he said no but claims that they use one at the office he was in. Unless you are satisfied by a “Mickey Mouse” product thats no more than a fancy fan blowing the coolness off of an ice pack, save your money! I just saved myself $400 by saying “No thanks”.
the newspaper ad says the second one is free, only pay for the shipping. Go to their website, click on “don’t have a claim code” and click “order”, the shipping is $49 plus a $8.94 “buy safe” fee scam. Then go back to http://www.coolsurge.com and type in the claim number. The shipping for two is not double but jumps to $147 plus a bogus $17.88 “buy safe” fee.
I would recommend buying a fan and attach a bent hanger on top while keeping the hook intact. Buy a few blue freezer ice packs, freeze them and place a ice pack inside a plastic market bag and hook it to your hanger and run your fan. After a while when the ice pack gets warm, exchange it with another already frozen in the freezer and get the same “cooling” effect without wasting your money.
I would like to cancel my order for Cool Surge, but don’t have a contact number. Can anyone supply a number to reach the order dept?
Cool Surge CUSTOMER SERVICE:
Address: 3939 Everhard Rd NW, Canton, Ohio 44709
Email: custserv@fridgeelectric • Phone: 1-800-504-8105
8:30 am to 9:00 pm Mon, Wed, Thur & Fri EST. • 9:00 am to 9:00 pm On Tuesday EST. • 8:30 am to 5:00 pm On Sat EST.
Good of you to post this. My mom kept talking about this device (i never heard of it). I came by her house on the way home from work and saw the ad…she said “look at this article”. I immediately knew it was one of those ads made ot look like a positive write up.
1st thing I did was Google it and came to this site and showed her.
Much appreciated! I hate this type of “ad”
Thanks, u just saved myself and another family member a fortune!!!
The ad of this product is very self selling, making the average shopper to take the time to investigate the product, due to nothing in the ad sayiny anything about how it works, how much area it cools and so on. We all know a light breeze is cooler and ice is cold, so your basically paying a fortune for a pretty box! Make your own if you desire for 50 bucks or less and consider this product a joke.
I do have one comment, you say that it uses energy up by using your freezer… do you not keep your freezer on LOL
When you stick something warm in your freezer it raises the temp and sets off the compressor – using electricity. The real issues are that this thing is not an efficient air conditioner and the adds are totally misleading.
if you are too stupid to use the cool surge, sorry, because this thing really works, and also has a 4094 BTU heater also. Not to mention the ionizer. By the way you idiots your freezern works less the more things that are in it. I freezer removes heat and the fuller your freezer is the more energy effecient it is
Thank you so very very much for the truth. I was almost taken in by the ad. I did call and the woman I spoke with could not tell me what the minimum sq ft one of these would cool. I was still considering it because my a/c was on the blink and I couldn’t get it fixed right away. I decided to look on line to see if there were any comments about the product when I was directed to this web site. Once again thank you all so very much for your correct version of this product.
Hey nice catch on this scam. Live in a retirement community here and this ad was in our “Daily Sun”. There are some MONSTERS out there preying on anyone they can get there hands on.
As the Consumer Reports piece notes, this scam item does provide some MINOR cooling from evaporation as well, but not enough to cool a room a most cases you’d what to. Worse, the process of freezing the packs in your frig actually creates more heat in your house! See also http://greenhomesamerica.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/another-scam%e2%80%94the-cool-surge-portable-air-cooler/. And DO NOT BUY ONE!
Thanks,
Mike
I live in Southern CA; the temp in August runs into the 100’s. Central Air costs us(3 Bedrm &
2 bathrm house) around $360.00 in Gas & Electric
I just bought the Cool Surge. I don’t expect it
to cool down the entire house; just my bedroom and maybe the family room. If this turns out to
be cost effective so much the better.
I am so glad I ran into this website. I, like a few others here was about to buy a Cool Surge. Actually 3. I always check stuff out via testimonials. I too have an a/c on the blink and actually dying and cannot afford the 5k for an entire new system, esp. for a house that will be just a weekender. Nonetheless, won’t be buying these suckers! Thanks again!
Yes, I just received mine today and there were no instructions in the box so I came online to look for them. As with others, I asked approximately how many btu’s was it equal to or how large a room would it cool and finally got a guess, I think.
After reading through these, I am now on the phone after finally finding the number in one of these posts and am currently on hold for the longest, but I am persistent.
I should have known better; I usually check feedback from others. This time I didn’t; oooops!
I live in a mobile home and as you know there is not much insulation in the ceiling (if any), so they heat up fast and get hotter than it actually is outside. When it’s 90 outside, on a sunny day, the temp goes over 100 without AC running. I thought I might save a littlt bit of my cooling costs. What a mistake. Here in Florida, it doesn’t pay to make a mistake.
I even tried to make it more efficient; so I filled the bin with ice cubes, laid the frozen blocks on top of the ice, then poured in cold water that I had in the fridge to top it off. Well, the breeze felt nice for awhile, but with room temps over 90, it doesn’t take very long for the ice to melt. It’s not an insulated compartment. I checked the rear of the cabinet and found that they have a woven wick that runs from the top of the cabinet all the way down to the bottom of the water bin. Sure didn’t take a genius to design this. So, all I have now is 2 fans in very fancy cabinets. Nobody’s fault but mine; they didn’t force me to buy them. Hope this helps somebody else from making the same mistake. They didn’t even send an invoice showing the tax and the shipping charges. I sent them an email and asked for it. I know; don’t hold my breath. Duh!!!!