How AirconWatch works

AirconWatch was built during the July 2026 heatwave sell-out, when portable air conditioners vanished from every UK retailer and no single page told you where one could actually be bought. This one does.

What we check, and how often

• 18 UK retailers: Currys, Argos, Screwfix, B&Q, John Lewis, AO.com, Appliances Direct, Toolstation, Wayfair, eBay, Machine Mart, Costco, Air Con Centre, Aircare, Voltage Models, Nisbets, DeLonghi and Devola (both direct brands).
• Every 2 to 5 minutes for national delivery stock, around the clock (the fastest retailers every 2).
• Click & collect too: Screwfix branches nationwide every ~30 minutes and Argos stores roughly every 90 minutes - so the map can show stock near you.

Every check is first-party: we read each retailer's own product pages and stock endpoints directly. No third-party feeds, no resold data, no guesswork.

What we filter out

Only real, portable, refrigerant air conditioners of 5,000 BTU and above make the list. We automatically drop evaporative "air coolers", misting fans, 12V camping units, BTU-rated gas heaters, fixed/installed split systems, through-wall monobloc units, accessories and pre-orders - the things that flood retailer search results and waste your time. There's also a sanity price ceiling to keep out gouged and miscategorised industrial listings.

Price watch

When a heatwave hits and demand spikes, some retailers take advantage and quietly push prices up - the same unit, suddenly costing more than it did yesterday. So every time we check stock we also record each in-stock unit's price, and the dashboard shows exactly who moved and by how much over the last 24 hours and 7 days. A unit that jumps in price gets a clear rise badge, and meaningful price drops are posted free to the Telegram channel. Two honest limits: we can only see a price while a retailer actually lists the unit, and we track products, never people. As ever, the retailer's own page is the final word on price.

Alerts, without your data

Restock alerts are free on the public Telegram channel @AirconWatchUK and the RSS feed - neither needs an account with us or collects any personal data. Email alerts run when the mailing list is open.

One deliberate difference between the channels: eBay listings appear and sell by the minute, so email covers our retailer stock checks and does not carry eBay listings at all. Telegram and this site carry every verified listing the moment we confirm it - so for the fastest eBay tracking, Telegram is the channel to follow.

Who runs AirconWatch

AirconWatch is built and run by Chris, from Cheshire. It started in the July 2026 heatwave for the most ordinary reason possible: trying to buy a portable air conditioner for his own house and finding nothing but sold-out pages and out-of-date stock listings everywhere. So he built a tracker that checks the retailers properly - and once it had found his unit, it seemed wrong to switch it off while everyone else was still refreshing sold-out pages. It has run continuously ever since, and now checks 18 retailers around the clock for thousands of visitors a week.

It is a one-person operation with no company behind it, which is exactly why it can stay blunt about what is genuinely in stock and who has quietly raised prices. Questions, corrections or a retailer worth adding: [email protected] - Chris reads everything.

Independence

AirconWatch is editorially independent and free: no retailer decides, pays for, or influences what appears here - listings are driven purely by live stock data. Where a retailer runs an affiliate programme, outbound links may earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you; this never affects what we list or its order. Stock moves fast in a heatwave - always verify price and availability on the retailer's page before travelling or ordering.