I believe Bosch AC equipment is rebranded. I think it's made by Midea, a Chinese AC equipment company.

Same name but in a different corner of the Bosch company structure, unrelated to Bosch dishwashers.

I myself would have probably purchased Trane equipment. I've heard some scary stories about how expensive Bosch boards are and how long it can take to get one when ordered. I'm not sure if that's all of them or maybe just for heat pump units. Did you get the heat pump model (runs forwards and backwards) or just straight AC?

Austin Air Companie , a long time contributor to this forum is owner/operator of a hvac company and has occasionally praised Bosch. Hopefully he will drop in and set your mind at ease with investing in the Bosch system. I've never heard anything about Bosch that would give me pause in buying one.

Thank you so much, Austin. It's all Greek to me, but I'll have my husband read it when he's done golfing, although he's pretty clueless too. The refrigerant prices are crazy, and our guy was complaining about tariffs, too, raising costs.

Heed his advice with caution. Watch his video to understand. He's a Chuck with a truck, a one man op in a small town.

Have YOU checked consumer reports?

I don't know if your question is directed to me but I can give you my answer.

I stopped finding Consumer Reports articles and ratings useful long ago. Findings and recommendations are often affected by its political positions and biases. I find it a repugnant conflict of interests that the org itself is politically active and not in an unbiased, non-partisan way way. I lost confidence in its credibility, I think it's lost and never to return.

For larger items too large for them to buy or dismantle, "reviews" often come from survey results. In which, people who are pleased with what they have will recommend it highly. Because, of course, it was what THEY chose and what they have IS THE BEST, because their choices are always the most accurate and enlightened. And negative reviews, from people who thought they'd been sc**wed because of misinformation, deceptive ads and, sometimes, a lying salesperson.

Elmer J Fudd: "I stopped finding Consumer Reports articles and ratings useful long ago."

How long ago? If you haven't subscribed to the website or magazine since "long ago", how do you know how it operates today?

"Findings and recommendations are often affected by its political positions and biases"

How does one have a "politicial position" on the performance of, say, an oven or coffee maker?

"For larger items too large for them to buy or dismantle..."

Please provide an example of one of these "larger items too large for them to buy or dismantle".

"reviews" often come from survey results."

CR does use reader surveys to gauge things such as appliance and auto reliability. Why is this illegitimate? Lots of organizations do it. Have you ever heard of polls? How would you suggest an independent organization assess appliance and auto reliability if other than by survey?

"And negative reviews, from people who thought they'd been sc**wed because of misinformation, deceptive ads and, sometimes, a lying salesperson."

This "sentence" doesn't have a verb so I don't know what you're claiming here.

@Austin Air Companie.....I'm from New Braunfels. You sound like an expert in your field! Good job taking care of the Shah family too! Your GOOD people!

Ray knows that I may argue with him on various non-HVAC related topics, but he has proven himself to be knowledgeable in his field.

When I purchased my new furnace I had to do it in a hurry (January in the NE and it died - no heat at all) and it was during COVID. I only had 2 companies that had any availability and each had one furnace that was in stock locally and was appropriate for my home. I read what I could find and picked the one that had the better internet found ratings. The one with higher ratings also had the lower price so it was a no-brainer decision.

If I had more time and more options I would have asked and trusted Ray's opinion.

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." (Attributed to Desiderius Erasmus)

Consumer Reports and bias. . .

Elmer does have a point. Consumer Reports not only publishes the Consumer Reports magazine, but since the 1960s has also had a political lobbying arm that advocates for consumer protections and consumer rights.

Their first lobbying / political actions were supportive of reporting tar and nicotine levels in cigarettes and informing the public of the impacts of smoking on people's health.

Since that time they have continued to advocate for consumer rights and consumer safety. Some of the issue they have lobbied for include automobile safety standards, clean car standards, greenhouse gas emissions standards, food and nutrition labeling, data privacy, and product safety.

Their focus on consumer rights over big business does make them a leftist organization. Could this possibly influence the ratings that they provide? It might. However, I think they have stayed true to their mission. I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe they are trying to influence anything outside of their lane - they aren't taking sides on issues like right to life or immigration or tariffs. Just consumer rights.

If you are strongly opposed to consumer rights and consumer safety regulation and think big business should be free to sell anything in any manor they want including lying about their product or making unsafe products or doing anything else that provides them with bigger profits without any regard to the impact on the consumer you should boycott consumer reports.

Is it a magazine that does lobbying, or a lobbying organization that has a magazine?

Why aren't the words "lobby" or "lobbying" prominently displayed on its website or mentioned in its materials?

I think it's more guilty of intentional misrepresentation and truth shifting as others it outwardly says it wishes to expose. They act hypocritically and evasively, as I see it. No more so than when it calls itself independent. Many read that as suggested that they're unbiased and uncommitted, but that's misleading and clearly not the case. I think it says it to mean not legally affiliated.

Consumer Reports clearly states they have a consumer advocacy role, which benefits their members and the public as a whole. On their website they ask for members to support their efforts to:

"Keep toxic chemicals out of our food.

Remove dangerous products from the market.

Ensure life-saving features are mandatory."

Those are certainly laudable goals--none of which require them to compromise their independent product reviews.

Folks I don't mind a good argument or do I mind choices among this or that. At the end of the day I can't service everyone I come in contact with.

It's mostly presenting choices... the odds someone in my direct service area (Katy, Texas) see's what I post here / maybe in relation to what problems others are having is quite low percentage. But I've never been about high numbers anything. What I do or don't do can often times become a mystifying number of reasons to lengthy to divulge here. (like the wind as they say)

There are likely other one man AC shops out there? yes, and a good number of them are probably nothing like me... where the chuck in a truck came from? There's risk in that as the chuck may go away as quickly as he came?

So I use various proofs as scams such as the chuck in a truck only puts in the bare minimum of work. He's not likely to sit in forum board typing out responses at length, create websites, produce videos via a you tube channel and so on. All these things take an immense amount of time.

It's not about me professing to know everything... although I am not here to profess I know nothing either. I am not here to suggest I need help... is things alway perfect in the HVAC industry, no. It is a business based upon service.

Service can mean an assortment of things to people. Scams / or true to life chuck's in trucks are not likely to be service focused.

Replacement of equipment is merely one facet of HVAC realm, I think many would be surprised to know that even new equipment breaks. That breakage can come from an assortment of reasons. Manufacturer defect, installation problems, improper use / operation / lack of maintenance and so on.

Conflicts of interest: most companies form via LLC, which is mostly to devoid themselves of responsibilty. There's risk in any job, The review that I posted is a big demonstrator of this as it's one thing for an AC to operate in 80F weather, quite another in 100F or nearly 100F degree weather. (It's fairly uncommon for me to take jobs this far out, but I do it on occasion when I think it's likely to be beneficial to both parties (me included with that)).

That being said, every area has it's own unique challenges when it comes to service / not to mention repairs involving service people. In addition to that is distributor enforced problems are beginning to limit us even more in various ways... these things come down from the HVAC manufacturer themselves.

It seems things are becoming a more take it or leave it approach. What I do or have done in the past is becoming more and more of a challenge. The manufacturers in my opinion would be all together gleeful if the one man band HVAC company was to disappear altogether. The fine line of this is: it's all about the money and nothing else.

On consumer reports:

The problem is manufacturers make a number of different models, configurations, and these change sometimes as often as every few years like we have seen in the recent past.

People rarely spend the time other than to grasp a certain brand name as being good. But being good or bad from a newish model takes time to discover as the equipment ages, the con with waiting for the equipment model to age is that by the time the report comes out to classify equipment model / name brand / configuration or other is good -- that particular model has been discontinued due to DOE requirements, refrigerant phase out, SEER / SEER 2 requirement and so on.

So then people say (I guess) that well that unit that was called good was named _________ whatever that brand name is. It's like well our last unit was xyz, so we'll assume the new one is going to be the same as our experience with the old one? um no.

Things change, time moves forward. Efficiency goes up and so do the chances that these things will make more trouble. HVAC industry was built on trouble so much so that consumer reports decided to cast a view on it. By the time you read about it... everything has changed again.

So the way I view Consumer Reports is more or less from an entertainment point of view. If you have a different view, thats fine. There are so many things that make a good unit good, just as much as a mystifying number of things that could cloud that judgement.

First of all, sack the guy who wants $4600 to replace the coil (he's just trying to sell you a new system) - the cost should be half that. Get the coil replaced and wait until the dust settles on the new refrigerant equipment in a couple of years.