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Friedrich WiFi Air Conditioner Sales & Marketing Epic Fail

As many are aware, I am on a mission to connect everything in my home to my WiFi. So when my through-the-wall air conditioner broke down, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to go to Best Buy and get a WiFi connected air conditioner.

But after a quick online search, I quickly realized that only one company called Friedrich made a WiFi connected air conditioner called Kuhl. I had never heard of this company but apparently they have made air conditioners for a long time.

This WiFi air conditioner is double the cost of the most expensive ones out there, and 3 times the cost of the more moderately priced ones.

Using their website, I located the closet retail distributor located in Ontario California. In fact, that was the ONLY one in my area. This dealer told me that not only is the WiFi unit not in stock but it would take 4-6 weeks to get one. On top of that, they did not have an installer in my area and I would have to find my own.

I couldn’t wait a month in this hot weather so I tried contacting Friedrich directly with absolutely no result. They never answered my emails. It’s possible something is wrong with their website because they had to have gotten at least one email from me. So in frustration, I contacted one of their non-retail dealers to see if they could help me. They also told me that WiFi unit was not available in stock, and even if they had it, they could not sell it directly to an end-user. I asked them if they knew how I could obtain one and they had no clue.

After a few days of digging, I finally gave up and had a regular non-WiFi air conditioner installed. Yes, it has a remote control, but that’s not as “cool” (pun fully intended) as using your smartphone to program the temperature during peak and non-peak times for each day.

How can a company survive when it’s almost impossible to get their product? Here they have a customer willing to pay 2-3 times the cost of other models and I cannot give away my money to save my life.

If anyone knows of a through-the-wall air conditioner that can be controlled and programmed via your smartphone other than from Friedrich, please contact me so that I can get one.