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Brisbane buyer
- 2 reviews
Poor product and worse customer service
A really BAD purchase. The first one broke down a month out of warranty. We were fool enough to replace with the same and the new one failed after 2 months. Mercator has failed to honour the warranty claim for nearly a month now - and that is in the Brisbane summer. So a bad (and expensive) product and a terrible company to deal with.
Purchased in October 2021 for $399.00.
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Russell WatersPerth, WA
- 3 reviews
- Verified purchase
Great fan but cheap remote and no product support
I bought a Mercator Avia ceiling fan (FC 488123BK) in September 2018. It cost around $400 and another $150 to have it installed. It is a beautiful fan; looks good and provides excellent airflow very quietly. I ran it for about 4-5 months over summer last year and never turned it on again until November 2022. After the first couple of uses the remote control went dead. The remote looked in new condition and has never been damaged in any way. Replacing the batteries did not help but after an hour or so tinkering with the device myself I found th...Read more
at one of the connections to the batteries was not working so I placed another piece of metal in there and got it to work. I do not think this is a good long term solution though particularly since there is no way to turn the fan off unless the remote is working. Therefore I set out to get a replacement remote control and this is where the problems began. There does not seem to be any direct replacement for the remote that comes with the fan (the model is FRM 113). I bought a replacement Mercator unit from Bunnings which we felt should work given it is the same brand but the controls are entirely different and it would not pair with the fan. It seems that the only way to get this fan back into reliable condition is to either purchase a new remote and receiver and have these installed by an electrician, or alternately to have an electrician instal a manual switch and forget the remote. So either way it is costly and annoying given that this is a relatively expensive fan that has hardly been used. So be careful if you are thinking of buying Mercator fans and operating them with the remote. The control unit with this fan is flimsy and complicated and if it fails you are stuck (possibly with a continually running fan) until you shell out further money to get it replaced by an electrician. An electrician I spoke with said that he has found this to be an ongoing problem with many of the higher level Mercator fans. Not surprisingly the remote units are only guaranteed for 12 months so obviously Mercator dont have much faith in them either. And don't expect any assistance from Mercator. My experiences communicating with Customer Care only demonstrated that they have very little interest in helping out a disappointed customer.
Purchased in September 2021 at Bunnings Warehouse for $380.00.
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The ceiling fan manAdelaide
Mercator Avia DC motor ceiling fan in black
I purchased the Avia black DC ceiling fan a couple of months ago from my local Bunnings Warehouse for $300 which was half the price I had seen it advertised on eBay, so off to a good start. I purchased the fan for my home projector room because of its very short drop from the ceiling so as to not cast a shadow on the projector screen, as the projector is also fixed to the ceiling. I had seen the fan at my local Bunnings display of their fans so I knew the look of what I was purchasing. The fan fitted in well with the projector room/man cave dec...Read more
or, which is full of wood effect speakers and black electronic boxes, so it looks great. It was not an easy install as the fan assembly is so short, (250mm drop) and that you are working with your head on the ceiling or very close to it to see all the fixings and wiring connections. The remote-control receiver unit fits snugly into the ceiling hanger bracket, if you fit it the correct way up, shiny side up and lumpy side down, you'll see, and insert it from the correct side of the bracket, thin end first in from the gap in the support brackets. The hard part is getting all the wiring to sit within the confines of the push up ceiling cones canopy, perseverance will get you there. However, don't fit the receiver until the motor assembly and down-rod has been hooked into place. When you hook the support ball of the motor assembly down-rod into the bracket loop, via the gap, rotate the down-rod assembly until the ball drops into a slot, don't worry it’s hard to miss it when it happens. Now connect up and install the receiver, its plug and play mostly, but make sure you connect the plugs after you have the wiring neat and tidy as they are a pain in the bum to get apart as the male female plug/socket connections lock together. The wiring for the receiver is mostly plug and play, but the inboard side of the terminal block on the support bracket is easier to wire when the remote receiver is slid back in its location to give more room and then re-positioned forward, when the wiring terminations are completed. Now push up the ceiling canopy cone to cover the wiring nest. Try to lace the excess wiring around the receiver unit otherwise you will not be able to push the canopy flush up to the ceiling, I used some cable ties to keep the wiring compact, tidy and in place, try to keep the remote receiver central in the support bracket as it has shaped ends to fit inside the canopy's cone shape. Don't worry too much if the upper canopy will not fit flush to the ceiling just as long as the gap is even on all around. On the black fan unit any gap still looks great and appears intentional. Well that's the easy part done, now for the hard bit, the fitting of the blades. This was a nightmare and the instructions were next to useless. Firstly, I found the fixing holes in the blades too tight for the screws to pass through, I guess this was a manufacturing issue. This issue also occurred on my second fan unit. As the blades are just wood effect plastic, I drilled them all slightly larger by approx. 1 mm to give a nice clearance fit, this you will require for later. Mounting the blades turned out to be a two-man job or should I say, one-man and a one-woman job, aka enter the wife assistant. I just could not do it without her. There is so little room to do this, the only way I found was to lift up the lower yoke canopy cone as high as possible and tip the rear part of the canopy down hence lifting the front up were I'm working, that gives you the maximum of amount of finger room, but it’s not enough for direct access to the blade fixing screw heads, from the top with a screwdriver. So, this is my technique to install the blades. Put the fan blade on your shoulder if you're high enough on your ladders that is and finger-in the bolts as far as you can until they are well started into the motors threaded holes, don't forget to fit the metal blade holder on top of the fan blade, and then the bolt goes through that, then the fan blade, then into the threaded motor holes, because believe me you don't want to do this twice. Then tighten up the bolts with a cross or flat head offset (I used a cross head) manual screwdriver, purchased from a previously mention DIY store for buttons, or under a $5. Luckily, I had a set in my garage. These things are Z or double L shaped screwdrivers. If you don't have any don't start the job. I could not fit any angled ratchet or screw driver set, there is just no room. The first fan blade is the hardest to fit. On the first one, I used a pencil mark on the motor case to line up all the holes for the screw to engage the threaded hole on the motor, after that the other blades butt up to each other so the screw holes are a slightly easier to hit, because you cannot see them. TOP TIP don't try and run this DC fan motor without the blades, as I did, because it won’t run, at least not correctly. I test ran it without the fan blades to check my wiring and the remotes operation. It would run for 5 secs, then stop, jiggle a bit like its thinking about the fact it might run in the other direction, then it will run for a few secs then stop for a few secs again, all very odd. I thought I had bought a dud. Now fortunately I had purchased a second Avia fan for my living room, so in stages, I replaced the remote receiver motor controller unit and then the fan motor, from the other unit. The same intermittent operation persisted each time, I repeatedly checked my wiring, checked and the supply with a voltmeter and found nothing wrong. Throughout all of this the LED light switched on and off via the remote perfectly at every test. Thinking I had purchased two duds, I phoned Mercator on their warranty number and they put me through to Matt on customer service, he had heard of this before and he recommended to fit the fan blades and she’ll be right. I did and it was, hey who knew. I'm happy with the unit now, it runs whisper quiet even when running flat out which is #6(max speed) however I run it a #4 speed to for silent running with a good air flow. However, it does seem to take a long time to get up to the remote selected fan speed, it’s a bit hard to tell as there is no discernible increase in fan or wind noise. Yes, the blades are wood effect plastic but they look OK from the ground, with their odd twisted shape and the 3-blade design looks very modern and I like it. It also did not require any fan blade balancing even though a blade balancing kit was provided in the box. The blades are only 1200mm wide, coupled with their short drop (250mm) they look a bit lost in big open plan areas like living rooms/kitchen areas, but perfect for bedrooms and man caves,1 comment
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Dave HSouth East Queensland, QLD
- 32 reviews
- 4 likes
Looks good in the picture on website and on box.
Did not see a display model or it out of the box, bought home questioned it with wife, put it together and threw out the box. Looks like and is a cheaper version of the more expensive looking fans of this type.
It doesn't make a noise when running very quiet, Blades look cheap, light bright but small, and fan size is small, over priced.
The blades where hard to put on instructions don't really tell you how to make it easier, found it hard to locate the DC transformer, so we were lucky it can sit above on a bracket in garage where we installed it.
All I can say is buyer beware and check it first to make sure it is what you want, over priced
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The ceiling fan man
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