Pocono News Section

Amish Fireplace Offer Leaves Family Cold

Amish Fireplace Offer Leaves Family Cold - Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 6:48PM EST

Reported by: Jeff Chirico
Thursday, Oct 16, 2008 @ 06:48pm EST
ASHLEY, LUZERNE COUNTY --A warning tonight for everyone looking to cut heating costs this winter. Don't be fooled by products that promise warmth but just blow a lot of hot air! Consumer reporter Jeff Chirico is live on the roof investigating one of those offers.

It's called the Heat Surge Electric Fireplace. Here's the offer --pay $300 for this supposedly Amish-made mantle, and you get this Chinese-made flameless fireplace for free. The ads call the heater a work of “engineering genius". But some say the only ingenious thing about this product is how it's marketed.

The newspaper ads show what looks like Amish craftsman building wooden mantles for flameless fireplaces. The headline vows rock bottom heating bills --and that you'll never be cold again. Carol Cierniakoski says "I slept on the couch and I was cold with the darn thing in front of me. It's a rip off. It's a fraud."

Cierniakoski bought the Amish fireplace for her son. She says not only didn't it keep him warm, Hank says his electric bill tripled. "It promised to lower the gas, which it did somewhat but the electricity went through the roof."

Hank Cierniakoski says “It promised it would only take the voltage coffee pot --electric coffee pot."

So we ask electrical engineer Len Crawford of Len Crawford Electric to test that advertising claim. Len Crawford says “I based on our studies right here we found the coffee maker draws about 35% less energy than an Amish stove." And the fireplace is on much longer. Len says you could get as much heat from a much cheaper space heater.

But the vice president of Heat Surge --the manufacturer --says comparing his product to a $30 space heater is irresponsible journalism. It is an electric fireplace with heater and all real wood mantle made by Amish. It features an innovative design that looks like real fire.

But Hank says he's not interested in tripling his power bills just to have a wooden mantle and fake fire. "Its a fraud. I don't want to see anyone be taken the way we were. We put our heart and trust into them and they failed us."

The Better Business Bureau reports nearly two hundred complaints. All have been resolved. However carol's been trying to return her unit for months. --but it wasn't until the I-Team got involved that she finally got a call back from the company. By the way, if you're looking to conserve heat, Crawford says get a programmable thermostat that'll will turn down when you leave the house. And add insulation.