In the American Midwest we get hot summers and cold winters--and incredibly large heating and cooling bills. Wanting to reduce the temperature of our house and lower our utility bills at the same time, my wife and I invested in the gold model from Reiker, and it worked great for two years.
When it stopped working this past winter, I gave Reiker a call and asked them if there were some quick fix that I could do, to which the very abrupt woman on the phone said, "Do you have the model number, sir?"
I flipped over the remote and read to her, "MODEL: FAN-15T."
"What is that? I don't know what that is. You have to give me the model number, sir."
"That is the model number from the back of the remote," I said, but it didn't do any good.
"Sir, you have to give me the correct model number," she whined.
Knowing that they only make four fans, three of them being the same fan just in different colors, I told her which one I had, but she cut me off and said very loudly, "Sir, you have to give me the model number. We cannot help you without the model number!"
I asked her where I could find the "correct" model number, and she said that the only place that it could be found is in the owner's manual--not on the fan, the remote, or even the box that it came in.
When time allowed several weeks later, I went to our storage unit where we kept the box with all its related paraphernalia, and pulled out the owner's manual, and gave them another call this morning.
Strangely enough, the model number wasn't so important this morning. She didn't even ask for it. She didn't ask for much of anything. She did ask if I had changed the switches in the back side of the remote, to which I replied that I hadn't. She suggested I give that a try and then reset it, which I did, but was rude enough to ask her to stay on the line while I tried it with the fan. Disgusted with my desire to keep her on the line, she put me on hold for 4 minutes.
When she finally came back, she asked if I had done that, to which I replied, "Yes, but it appears to be to no avail."
Then the claws came out again. "Well, sir, do you have the receipt?"
"Yes."
Apparently not expecting anyone to still have their original receipt, she asked again, "You have the receipt?"
"Yes, I sure do."
"Well, you will have to mail the motor to . . ." and gave me an address to King of Fans in Ft Lauderdale. She then told me that I would have to mail a copy of the original receipt, the motor, my name, address, phone number, description of the problem with the fan, and the remote to them--along with a check for $37 for the King of Fans to ship it back to me.
"Whoa," I said. "You do not service your own fans? And you are going to make me pay for everything?"
"You have to pay for the shipping both ways, sir," she growled.
I told her how disappointed I was with the fan and her company, to which she had absolutely no reply. I waited for her to give some kind of answer, but she never did. I finally said, "goodbye," and she hung up as soon as the word was out of my mouth.
Now that's not what I would call great customer service. And a $379 fan should last a lot longer than two years. I'm sure that if we mailed the motor to Florida, the King of Fans would find a problem with it unrelated to anything that Reiker would cover in their "Lifetime Limited Warranty", so I believe I'll save the additional expense and frustration and buy a regular fan from a decent company.
I think, all in all, the fan may have saved us $75 in our heating and cooling bills (interesting to note that if we sent the motor, that savings would be entirely used up in the shipping), which leaves $304 that we now have spent on a very large paper weight.
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White Finish Reiker Room Conditioner Thermostatic Remote Control Ceiling Fan With HeaterProduct Description: Integrated light kit-bulb included. 2 position mounting options: Flush mount to ceiling or 6" downrod. White finish with reversible White/White blades. 1500 Watts/12.5 Amps/120 Volt/ 5000 BTU/35 lbs. Model number: RRC 120035.
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We put this in my 13 year old son's room.It works great and looks cool.Plus, he can turn it off and on with the remote from his loft bed.
