Discount Avanti 166 Bottle Wine Cooler

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I bought the Avanti because it was one of the cheapest wine fridges on the market at the time (in 2007) for the number of bottles held. I've come to somewhat regret that choice. Before I start with the problems, I will say it is an attractive cellar. The glass door, the lights at the top, and the shelves look nice. The brown-painted metal walls are similar to regular household refrigerators. The engine/fan noise is definitely present, but it is quiet enough that I keep mine in a formal dining room without a problem over dinner.

Now for the problems:

First, the off-gassing is a serious problem. When I first got it, I cleaned the shelves and the inside fridge walls over and over, aired them in the sun, and left piles of baking soda in it. I still felt uncomfortable leaving my higher priced bottles in it, the chemical smell was so strong. The smell lasted 4-5 months!

Second, the shelving slots and the distance between shelves were designed to only fit the smallest shape of all standard (750ml) wine bottles: Bordeaux bottles (Cab/Merlot/Sauvignon Blanc). With anyone other type of wine, the shelves are a pain. If your bottle is slightly fatter, the next one won't fit in the adjacent wooden slot. If the bottle is slightly longer, you can't oppose necks to stagger bottles in the back row. So instead of 11 bottles on shelf, you may only get 7 to 9 and they roll around since they don't sit in the slots.

The bigger problem is the shelves are too close together, so except for Bordeaux bottles, the shelf above your bottles won't slide well, and it scrapes the labels off the bottles beneath it. The worst case is with some Rhone wines (incl. Syrah), Burgundy (Pinot Noir) and Champagne bottles: you have to remove every other shelf to allow enough head room.

All of which dramatically impacts how many bottles you can really hold. In my mixed collection, I can probably store about 100 bottles.

Finally, my compressor quit after 18 months. It was still under warranty but the company will not pay for labor, just the part, and the part is back-ordered for at least a month. To make matters worse, none of our local refrigeration companies want to service Avanti products. We called numerous companies, and they all said it was an "off-brand". Avanti was no help either they offer no service for the entire states of Georgia and South Carolina.

So, the old lesson lives: you get what you pay for.

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I sell wine for a living. I needed storage space fast, and I bought two of these. One broke after six months, couldn't be repaired, and Avanti gave me a brand new one. That broke after four months, and then the other one eventually broke too. I have extended warranties on them but I don't even want to fix them because it's too much trouble unloading all the wine every time they break. If I have them repaired I'd bet big bucks that they break within a year. Two thousand bucks down the toilet. If you want one of mine I'll have it fixed for you on the warranty and you can have it for $200. On top of wasting my money, I can't just throw these in the garbage, so I may have to pay to get it taken to a landfill. They should ban any product coming from china that weighs more than 20 pounds this product led to me to throw out a half ton of garbage, and that's just from one year of use! If I could give it negative stars I would. If I could pay another $100 to make Avanti suffer a fraction of the pain I've endured over this P.O.S. I'd send it in right now. Recap: 3 brand new units all broken and worthless after six months of use.

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RE: AVANTI COOLER ACTUALLY FREEZES YOUR WINE AND AVANTI COULD CARE LESS

I have had this unit for almost 8 months now and this morning I discovered about 12 bottles had blown their corks. My beloved CA Pinot collection is toast!

The "Set Temp" LED read 58 degrees F. Right next to it sits the "Internal Temp" LED, which read 32 degrees!!!

I took pics of this, and of the blown corks, the frost covered wine collection of 90 bottles or so. But Avanti didn't care. I spoke to a superior manager, but she didn't care and said I saved money on the purchase. Avanti could care less about your wine collection. Do not buy their products if you care about your wine. Simple as that.

/LM

Honest reviews on Avanti 166 Bottle Wine Cooler

The wine cooler does take a number of times to clean before the chemical smell finally goes, but seems to be a well constructed unit for the price. My only real issue is the spacing of the draws and the fact each draw only holds 11 bottles, 12 would have been nice. The spacing becomes a problem if you have wine from different wineries that use non-standard bottle sizes.

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They only way this cellar holds 166 is if the wine bottles are a standard size bordeoux wine. Since wine collectors obviously purchase wines from all over the world there is no way to expect this cellar to hold 166. For me it is more like 140. My temperature control is also usually off by two degrees, no bigee but adds to the disappoinment