Shoutout to the guy who sold me a fake HVAC filter subscription

I fell for one of those online ads for a cheap filter subscription service last spring. Paid $45 upfront for 6 filters that were supposed to last a year. First one I got was way too thin and didn't even fit my unit right. Second one showed up 3 months late and felt like cardboard. I emailed them 6 times and never got a reply, so I'm out $45 and my AC is probably working way harder. Has anyone else gotten burned by these sketchy filter subscription sites?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_joseph1mo ago

Figured out the real scam here - they're not even making money off the filters. They collect your address, email, phone number, and credit card details, then sell that data to marketers and scammers. The $45 is just a bonus. I know this because I used a burner email and prepaid card for one of these and started getting spam calls and phishing texts within a week. The only reason the second filter showed up at all is so they could prove they "delivered" something in case anyone tried to do a chargeback.

daniel5931mo ago

bro that sucks, I got burned by one of those too. paid like 50 bucks for a year's worth and the second filter literally fell apart when I tried to slide it in. the cardboard edges just crumbled. mine also showed up way late and the customer service email bounced back. total scam, feels like these sites just pop up overnight and disappear. your AC definitely works harder with those cheap thin ones too, I noticed my electric bill went up a bit until I switched back to the normal store brand.

ben_nguyen23d ago

Yeah @daniel593 mine showed up late too, which was funny because the tracking number never updated past "label created." The first filter actually worked okay for about a month but the second one had this weird chemical smell when I pulled it out of the plastic. Not like a normal new filter smell either, more like burning plastic and dust. I ran it for a day and my whole first floor smelled like a hardware store. Ended up tossing both and getting the cheap ones from Home Depot that at least don't make the house smell like an electrical fire.