"Don Stauffer" wrote in message
...
Jim Wilkins wrote:

"I just saw the TV ad for the "Heat Surge" (free if you buy the Amish
enclosure for $289 Plus S&H) for the umteenth time. They said at
the
end of the ad that ---not to worry, it is safe since it uses no more
power than the average coffee maker--.
Okay, so why not just use your coffee maker for the heat and save
ALL
the purchase price? "

jw

Exactly. All electric heaters are virtually 100% efficient. It is easy to
turn electricity into heat, very hard to turn it into anything else
without some of the electric energy coming out as heat. Those heaters are
a scam. I am trying to convince people of this, but the usual response is,
"if it were not true, they wouldn't let them put that in the paper."

You're thinking about this in the same terms I was, and I still think it's
the honest way to approach it. But as several people mentioned here, you
could claim to save energy costs with one of these things if you use it for
local room heating, and lower your general household temperature.

Not having seen the ads it isn't clear if they're including that fact, or if
they're implying that they're talking about lowering costs for heating the
whole house. The way the FTC interprets the law, if you imply something that
isn't true, even without stating it explicitly, your ad is fraudulent.

--
Ed Huntress