Does everything it says it will

I bought this dual-temp wine fridge about 2 months ago, and so far everything has been great. It came assembled for about $60 shipping, set up in a minute, and has been quietly keeping my white and red cool since.

The unit is pretty large - make sure to check the dimensions. It's attractive in black with a silver bezel around the glass door. The two LED temp displays are bright blue - almost bright enough to be a night light.

Setting the temperatures is pretty easy. It works like setting your average bedside alarm clock. I chose to have the top (smaller) portion at 46 for white and the lower (larger) portion at 62 for red. I haven't tried putting my own thermometer in to test the temp, but the digits rarely deviate from what I set them at, even during the 80+ degree days at the end of the summer.

In terms of noise, it's relatively inconspicuous. When the compressor turns on, there is a hum but it's not enough to bother me at all in my mid-size living room, even while working or watching a movie. This was one of my concerns to begin with and this product makes the grade. Silent would be better, but I'm very content.

I haven't had it long enough to test more than a few wines that have been stored in the fridge, and that'll be the real test. We'll gave to wait and see, but expect the results will be favorable. Overall, I'm quite satisfied.

[Monday, October 06, 2008]

Horrible quality and inept service

NICE CONCEPT, BUT I WOULD THINK TWICE ABOUT BUYING HAIER.

This is a nice compact wine cooler. The top shelf will go down to 43 degrees (if it is working) for 10 bottles of white and the bottom shelf will go down to 56 degrees for 25 bottles of red. It is a small size that can fit into a corner. It is a good height, being about the height of countertop. You can take shelves out so you can store magnums.

The unit has adjustable feet for leveling, but there is not adjustment available. It is easy to unscrew a foot all of the way out, and then it is difficult to screw back in. I ended up putting a coaster under one of the feet to level the unit.

BUT IT IS VERY POOR QUALITY.

When I got the unit home, I found it had a broken door and would not seal. The manual says, don't return the unit, but call for service.

Haier contracts out the service to the same company that does home service calls for Sears. I called and someone came within a week. They found that the door was broken and needed to be replaced.

A new door was ordered from Haier. It took about 3 months for a door to come. Haier sent 2 doors, because both doors were badly chipped. I guess they felt we would just choose the one that was the best. Then Haier sent out 3 more doors, each one worse than the next.

I was getting nowhere with Haier, so I sent an email to the company headquarters in China. I finally got some action, and Haier said they would replace my entire unit.

I did get a "new" unit. It was kind of dinged up, but the door sealed.
Also, some of the shelves do not stay in place.

After about 30 days of running, the unit will start making a lot of noise. There is actually a thing in the owners manual about this. It says if the cooler starts making noise, unplug it for a little while. Of course, this is a bid pain, if you have the cooler up against the wall and the plug is not easy to access. It means about once a month, you need to empty the wine cooler, move it out from the wall, unplug, wait and push it back.

After 5 months, this new unit stopped cooling on the top shelf. I called Haier and they said it is no longer under warranty, since I purchased the unit over a year ago. But, the first unit was bad for 7 months and not really usuable. I've only had a "working" unit for 5 months.

I am now going to appeal to corporated headquarters and see if they will do something about it.

[Wednesday, May 07, 2008]

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