Lunirel have left my mother high and dry

cat_plant

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82101901#Comment_82101901

They stopped reply to her too which is why I thought I'd try. It all seemed rather muddled and they repeatedly asked her for a video.

molerat

Unfortunately your mother seems to have purchased from one of the many dodgy Chinese sellers out there. Did she pay with a credit card ? In the op you state £176 but your link shows as priced at £76 which would be below the threshold for invoking a s75 claim if paid on a credit card so what price was actually paid ? The bank will unlikely intervene without sending the item back to China at her cost with a 99% certainty that it will never arrive. This could end up being a hard lesson I am afraid in not buying things on the internet without first investigating the provenance of the seller.

Ergates

Unfortunately, regardless of the model delivered, these types of "air cooler" are a scam.

They don't cool the air at all. They're just overpriced fans with a humidifier. In some places that experience a dry heat, increasing humidity can make someone feel a bit cooler. However, the UK is not one of those places - we already have relatively high humidity (because we're an island) so they do nothing.

She'd be better off with a cheap desk fan.

Alderbank

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82101962#Comment_82101962

I'm not too keen on using the 's**m' word which is overused but I do agree that product is very poor value for money; all the OP's mum has is that cheap desk fan🙁.

Temperature and humidity are equally important in air conditioning but I think you might be a little confused how they work? Decreasing, not increasing humidity makes you feel cooler. That's because your own natural cooling system (sweat) works so much better when the air is dry than when it is saturated with water vapour.

If you want a demonstration of that, try tipping water onto the hot coals in a sauna!

QrizB

As we're discussing swamp coolers:

Decreasing, not increasing humidity makes you feel cooler.

Yes, but blowing dry air over a damp surface causes water to evaporate, cooling the air in the process.

These can be very effective in hot, dry climates (many years ago I visited the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona were they said they saved a fortune on electricity by switching to evaporative cooling). Not so much if it's hot and wet.

Currently the UK is kinda in the middle; at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire it's currently 36C and 20% RH.

If you want a demonstration of that, try tipping water onto the hot coals in a sauna!

Or, for the effectiveness of evaporative cooling, drape a damp tea towel in front of a fan.

Vitor

Take this as an opportunity for OP to discuss power of attorney with elderly mother.

elsien

To be fair, we all make mistakes. fell for an Amazon fraud the other day. OP’s mother maybe just needs a bit more information about how to check if a company is legitimate or not.

Just had to have a similar conversation with my 87-year-old mother about checking addresses and company details before ordering. And phoning me if she’s not sure She is still perfectly capable of doing it herself. We just need regular conversations about what concerns are currently doing the rounds.

Yes a power of attorney is very sensible to have in place in case needed in the future. I just think we need to explain things to older people a bit more than maybe we do sometimes at the moment.

Ergates

I'm not too keen on using the 's**m' word which is overused but I do agree that product is very poor value for money; all the OP's mum has is that cheap desk fan🙁.

I'd normally agree, many things that get called scam aren't - but these are specifically advertised and sold as "coolers" and many adverts say "air conditioner", both of which are objectively false which, to my mind, pushes these into scam territory.

Chief_of_Staffy

I see it's already been mentioned, but these products are outright scams. There is no way of cooling air inside a room without expelling the hot air. These devices actually heat up the room, and heat it up faster than a fan as they tend to draw more power.

You can buy portable air conditioners that vent out the window, and these will often have a cooling effect, albeit small to moderate. You can also go for wall-mounted ones that vent through the wall and these will, if specced correctly, cool down your whole room by a significant margin. They cost thousands, though.

So unfortunately it doesn't matter what kind of fan they sent, it's still a scam and it won't cool you any more than sitting by a five quid fan from Amazon.

MattMattMattUK

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82102808#Comment_82102808

Technically they are evaporative coolers, so that part is correct, but this is advertised as an air conditioner, which it is not. I think the entire description has been translated into English and written by AI, it has a "Refrigerating capacity" of "300ml water tank", it is labelled as 110V and in reality that whole site screams Chinese drop shipper, every image is AI generated including of the alleged store, the descriptions are badly written by an poor AI model, the terms and conditions do not identify any legal entity etc.