The "Eco Fridge". Evaluate this idea.

[Rain Man]

I'm in a hotel tonight, and I brought some leftovers from a restaurant that I'd like to have as an early lunch tomorrow before checking out. The room has a mini-fridge, so I put the food in it.

I noticed that the fridge was warm inside. Sometimes hotels turn them off, so it wasn't a huge surprise. So I looked inside it for the dial/switch to turn it on.

There was a button on the side to turn it on, and to make a long story short, the mini-fridge is an "eco fridge" where it automatically turns off after two hours when you turn it on. If you want to keep it cool, you have to press the button again after two hours. You can keep the fridge going indefinitely, but only if you press the button every two hours.

What is your opinion of this concept? I'll post my opinion in the first post so as not to bias anyone.

[notorious]

It's extremely stupid.

[Rasputin]

Are you going to wake up every two hours to turn it back on?

[Bowser]

My opinion that sounds like a really good idea for the hotel to keep their electric bill down, and a really shit idea for its guests like you that want to keep anything chilled.

[BWillie]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'm in a hotel tonight, and I brought some leftovers from a restaurant that I'd like to have as an early lunch tomorrow before checking out. The room has a mini-fridge, so I put the food in it.

I noticed that the fridge was warm inside. Sometimes hotels turn them off, so it wasn't a huge surprise. So I looked inside it for the dial/switch to turn it on.

There was a button on the side to turn it on, and to make a long story short, the mini-fridge is an "eco fridge" where it automatically turns off after two hours when you turn it on. If you want to keep it cool, you have to press the button again after two hours. You can keep the fridge going indefinitely, but only if you press the button every two hours.

What is your opinion of this concept? I'll post my opinion in the first post so as not to bias anyone.

How can I invest?

[displacedinMN]

few are in the room to press the button every 2 hours. What about when you are sleeping? Leftovers and drinks are supposed to be cold. What is the point if you miss it after 4 hours.

How is it eco if it takes more energy to cool than to keep running.

stupid, stupid idea.

[Rain Man]

I actually went down to the lobby and asked, "Am I misunderstanding something about this? I want to keep my food cold overnight and I don't want to set my alarm for every two hours to push the button."

The woman looked very apologetic, and said, "That's how they work. If you want to keep your food cold, you can bring it down here and we'll put it in our staff refrigerator."

Okay, what is the purpose of a refrigerator? It's to keep food cold. A fridge that turns off is basically a cabinet, and I need a fridge.

I was pondering how such a dumb design got made and sold. I guess maybe someone could have done calculations and decided that if you chill food for two hours and then don't open the fridge, the temperature will hold for eight hours? I can see that, I guess, but I question the math. I turned the fridge on, and three hours later it felt like room temperature inside it. I don't think there's a chance that it'll stay cold overnight.

I'm mystified. This seems like the worst idea ever. I coincidentally have a cooler with me, so I went and loaded it up with ice, and I'm not using the "eco fridge". Maybe that saves energy, but I bet the ice maker takes more energy than keeping the fridge on.

I give this concept a grade of F.

[HonestChieffan]

all refrigerators should be like this

Then we will invent a gizmo to reset it. With an app. And sell subscriptions.

"merica

[Bowser]

They're actually doing that with the air conditioning, as well. When we stayed in St. Louis to see the Sammy Hagar show, the A/C would go back to its preset temp after a couple of hours. So one of us would have to walk over and crank it back down from the preset after we'd wake up sweating and cool the room back down. Pretty chintzy, really.

[Fish]

Yeah, I'd have that thing rewired in a matter of minutes....

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Bowser

They're actually doing that with the air conditioning, as well. When we stayed in St. Louis to see the Sammy Hagar show, the A/C would go back to its preset temp after a couple of hours. So one of us would have to walk over and crank it back down from the preset after we'd wake up sweating and cool the room back down. Pretty chintzy, really.

This is a bad, bad trend. We need to document which hotels do this so no one will accidentally stay in one.

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

This is a bad, bad trend. We need to document which hotels do this so no one will accidentally stay in one.

Comfort Suites in St. Charles. Add it to the list.

[Womble]

In response you should be an eco hotel guest too. By shitting on the floor you are doing your bit to help limit water usage by not flushing the toilet.

[mr. tegu]

Dumb idea. I have a fridge related incident as well. This was at the Caesars in Vegas. We were only there for a weekend and at the time my wife was pumping milk and we planned to bring it home. While there we were storing it in the fridge. Every so often the fridge would apparently get locked. So we had to call the desk and they would unlock it for us for multiple times.

I thought it weird a fridge could be remotely locked but I just figured it was some sort of way to prevent people from drinking too much. We never did take a single drink but we did move stuff around. When we went to check out they were trying to charge us over $100 on beverages from the fridge. It turns out that they could not only lock and unlock the fridge they could sense when drinks were removed, or in our case just moved, which we had to do to make space. I was able to get the charge taken off but they were kind of mad about it (maybe they didn’t believe me) and said that we should have used their courtesy refrigeration they have somewhere around the lobby.

Who knew there were so many specialized features of mini fridges.

[Frazod]

Problem refrigerator, you say? Hmm....