Multi Billion Dollar AC Industry Destroyed and Other Scam Advertising

Has the multi-billion dollar AC industry been destroyed by a college kid from Phenix(sic) as claimed in a youtube ad?

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

In this thread I will discuss two fake tech-related scam adverts for products that I saw a lot on youtube. The first one is a product that claims a college kid from Phenix(sic) destroyed the billion dollar AC industry:



One reason I may have seen ads like this is my participation on a conspiracy site like ATS, because the ads use some different marketing gimmicks and that one sort of appeals to the idea that a conspiracy of fat cats in the AC industry is ripping us all off on air conditioners, when you could save huge amounts of money on the cost of the air conditioner bill and even more on your electric bill on this miracle invention which cools a room dramatically for only pennies. The ad claims the invention of the college kid cooled his classroom from 95 to 65 degrees in just 2 minutes:


Everyone who has a working BS detector should find it pegged out when seeing some ridiculous claim like that.


I thought these ads were so ridiculous that nobody could possibly believe them except maybe young kids with no life experience who aren't the target market for selling air conditioners, but I must have been wrong because the ads kept running so they must be selling these things to somebody. Then another even more ridiculous claim appears in the ad, that it performed that amazing cooling using 90% less electricity than a regular AC system:


Or is it 98.7% cheaper as the ad claims a little bit later?


Since I never bought one of those units, how do I know the claims are false? We have the old adage that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is, plus you can see they are just making up claims that don't even agree with each other like the 90% versus 98.7%. So I knew it was some kind of scam, but I didn't know what you would really get if you ordered that product until I watched this informative YouTube video which tests the product against the claims in the ad:

Is Chillwell Portable AC a Scam? (Yes, Here’s Why) - Krazy Ken’s Tech Talk


To summarize what the video says, almost everything in the ad is a lie. The exception would be it really does use a lot less power than an AC (Air conditioner) because it's only an AC (Air Cooler), sometimes called a "swamp cooler" which cools by evaporating water, which actually makes the air in the room more humid (something that you usually don't want if you're already feeling hot, because higher humidity makes it feel even hotter).

The ad says the "college kid cooled his classroom from 95 to 65 degrees in just 2 minutes", so he ran the cooler for 2 minutes and the room he tested it in went from 84 degrees to 84 degrees (no change). Looks like the ad was a lie.

After 30 minutes, it cooled the room by one degree, but keep in mind he followed the instructions to place the wet cooling pad in the freezer to freeze it before the test, so he actually incurred extra refrigeration costs from putting that pad in his freezer, above what electricity the unit itself uses. Maybe some of that one degree of cooling came from the pad he froze in his freezer. We could do an entire youtube video on just why removing cold things from your freezer to cool a room is not an economical cooling solution.

One other ad I'll cover in the OP is for an amazing plasma torch that doesn't use any butane and runs on electricity according to the ad, but when you get the product, it absolutely does not run on electricity and only runs on butane. So the ad is probably 75% lies, but 25 % is true, like the ad shows it burning the paint off a soda can, it will do that.

The youtuber poses the question of why youtube allows these ads, and he says if youtube blocks this one, they probably have 40 other companies that can market essentially the same product under another name so it's difficult for youtube (and possibly the FTC, since these ads are illegal false advertising) to keep up even if they do block a product. They come from China where it's difficult for western courts to prosecute the perpetrators.

Unlike the air cooler ad above which is marketing a total piece of junk that you probably don't want to use, he says the butane torch that claims to not run on butane is actually a decent product once you put butane in it, though it's not what the ad claims, and you pay $40 getting it from the scam ad when you could buy the same thing on Amazon for about $15-16 (one of the many lies in the ad is that you can't buy it on Amazon!).

⚠️ YouTube Scam Ads EXPOSED!😡 No Gas Electric Plasma Torch! 🔥

In this video, I expose scam ads on YouTube about the BrightFire or Fireblaze gasless plasma torch device. I not only show that these ads are total lies, but I walk you through each step of the video and teach the secret psychological techniques they are using to fool millions into buying their product. I also reveal the dirty little secret of how they make money even after they refund your money.

This video analyzes the five main psychological marketing tricks employed not only in this ad but also in many other marketing ads, so if you're not familiar with these marketing tactics, I recommend watching the video to arm yourself with this knowledge, which makes you more prepared to defend yourself against these tactics, when you are exposed to them in many other places.

The topic of this thread is scam advertising, so in addition to the AC and torch scam ads, please post about any other scam ads you've run across, which will help inform others of what to watch out for. Have you ever bought any technology from any advertising that turned out to not be as advertised?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

We had a big swamp cooler where in worked. About four feet square. It worked great as a fan. The water cooling part really did not do anything in the 90% plus humidity in the plant.

I ran the cooling tower out back that worked on basically the same prencipal to cool the machinery, force air through water to cool the water. It was he size of a small house. It's fan was 8 feet in diameter on a 15 horsepower motor. It did drop the water to just below the temperature of the ambient air but not much. Mostly from direct transfer and little from evaporation.

Yes, they try to convince the ones that don't known any better to buy the latest flavor of something that is decades old if not older. Enough fall for it to keep them selling more junk.

a reply to: BeyondKnowledge3
Yes, swamp coolers do have some applications, and if you're in a low humidity environment, they can be even more effective because water can evaporate even faster when the humidity is low. The OP video on the cooler mentions that large swamp coolers can be used effectively in some applications, and Phoenix tends to have lower humidity than other places so that's one area where you can see them used effectively.

However, these tiny things they are selling like the "Chillwell" or whatever name of the day they are using do almost nothing to cool the room as shown in the tests, and raise the humidity. Here's another video for a similar product, but he talks about some real applications of swamp coolers:

Mythbusting a Miracle Cooling Machine: Basically a Sped Up Sweat Box- Arctic Air Pure Chill Review

This 'Arctic Air' Pure Chill machine is trying to sell itself as an air conditioner, but it's actually a cleverly disguised evaporative humidifier, like you'd use in an old house in wintertime. Ridiculous. Here's a bit of testing and science fundamentals to help you avoid re-branding and other marketing tricks in your home. For the testing, I used the temperature/humidity datalogger HOBO MX1101.

There are so many scams out there these days that you can't believe much anymore without researching if there is anything to it. I do know someone who modified an engine system to burn water with a little bit of organics in it, they sold the patent to brigs and straton I think and the technology got buried...evidently the government could not regulate the kind of organics added to water added by the user so they could not regulate what the exhaust composition would be.

But at least they got a million bucks for selling the patent and B&S can develope it someday...It does require modified catalytic converters and starting the car on gas tll the converters get hot.

There were five guys in on it, so they basically got their money back and any profit they made was equivalent to an hourly wage of the time they put into developing it. It separated the water to make hydrogen some how, I saw the patent papers....before the guy I know dies I should get a copy of the design just in case we have a gas shortage. They stilll have one of the cars I guess...but are restricted from ever selling the technology. I think Briggs sold the patent too. Just think of how many jobs would be lost if we did not need gas stations or oil refining and aquisition....that was the big reason this was buried....also you cannot tax water, a lot of loss of income for the government.

originally posted by: rickymouse
There are so many scams out there these days that you can't believe much anymore without researching if there is anything to it.

Some of these scammers are clever. I remember running a search, trying to do some research as you say, and the search results gave me lots of links to lots of fake articles about how great these coolers were. They must have figured out how to game the Google search algorithm to show results favorable to their scam, even when you're searching for results to expose the scam.

Adding anything to gasoline, you need to consider what effect if any it will have on the catalytic converter. If it coats the converter with some kind of residue, then eventually the car may not pass the smog test and if you have to replace the catalytic converter, those things are very expensive.

Speaking of gasoline additives, most of those are probably ineffective and not worth the money, especially if you buy good gas that already has detergents in it to keep your fuel injectors clean. It turns out it's pretty easy to test the products discussed in the OP, but testing fuel additives is much more difficult, especially if you are evaluating long term degradation of engine and exhaust system components, you need to invest in control engines and exhaust systems, test engines and exhaust systems, and test them over a long time or maybe 50,000 miles equivalent or even more if you expect to get 100,000 miles out of the vehicle. It gets so expensive that few labs can afford to do that, the auto makers can do it if they think it might be worthwhile but even they have limited budgets for testing.