Harvest Right Freeze Dryer Reviews

Love our Harvest Right!

I bought the Medium size white freeze dryer. Love it! So easy to use. Pre freezing your food helps to go faster. We have done 30lbs of blueberries and 20lbs of chicken. They taste great! Tossed blueberries in my pancakes and didn't need to rehydrate. Tasted like fresh blueberries and not all messy. The chicken tasted like it just came out of the pressure cooker. Excited for the 66lbs of peaches that are coming.

We bought the large with the oil pump. Only had it a month and have done raw/ cooked meats, fruit, veggies, sauces. What a time saver! When I had questions they responded within a couple hours.

I love Harvest Right because they treat every customer like their own mother!! We normally work with a gentleman named Greg.. Greg is the best customer service rep we have every worked with! I have a company and I wish Greg was one of my employees.. Thank you Harvest Right and most of all, Thank you Greg!

I purchased my Harvest Right Freeze Dryer in 2017. It has worked very well. I love the shelf life and my Grandkids eat the fruit like candy. However, I do have one of the original oil pumps and I do not like having to change the oil every load. I have not purchased a new pump because of the expense. There was a learning curve but when I got past that I have enjoyed my machine very much. I am presently having some issues but customer support seems to be very helpful in resolving the issue. I recommend this product and have encouraged friends and family to purchase one.

We bought our freeze dryer about 2 months ago and have thoroughly enjoyed learning how and what to freeze dry. We have freeze dried our own hot sauce, refried beans, cream of mushroom and chicken, tomato sauce not to mention our grandchildren’s candy favorites: skittles, jolly ranchers, marshmallows, bit o honey and salt water taffy. My wife absolutely loves the strawberries and bananas we’ve done as well. Overall, love the ease in its use and everything we’ve done thus far!

We absolutely love our two Harvest Right Freeze dryers. We purchased a large model earlier this year a sold the small we had. Owning a large and medium FD is the way to go for us. We have had zero issues with Harvest Right. Top shelf company.

I use and love my Harvest Right freeze dryer. I also love to garden and so I have extra tomatoes, peppers and squash. I have been freeze drying tomatoes and the peppers and I love the way they are turning out. They really look nice and I love how colorful they stay!

Harvest Right has been absolutely wonderful in both they're products, and their customer service. We have had their medium FD for several months now and have use it continuously with great success. The couple of times we've contacted customer service, they have been very helpful!

We like our freeze dryer...our kids favorite is freeze dried strawberries and freeze dried ice cream. There is a learning curve, but there are great support groups on facebook, so don't be intimidated.

Love this thing! Been using it for a few weeks now. My son loves the strawberries best.

I love my harvest right. It is hands down the best thing I have ever purchased!!

I have a brand new freeze dryer with the oil-free pump option. I cannot tell you how loud this thing is, not to mention all the pretty ads have these things in a kitchen...for real!?! Try having a conversation over the top of a running vacuum cleaner, and then also add a noisy freezer.

Plainly stated in the instruction manual is "use only in well-ventilated area". Well, I assumed my open concept kitchen/living room area would be well vented enough...it's NOT. The manual further notes not to sleep in a room where a freeze dryer is running. And we soon found out why!

Whatever is exhausted from an oil-free pump is still enough to give us all headaches (freon maybe??). And why is there no exhaust tube on either the oil pump or the oil-free pump to run an exhaust outside? Other vacuum pumps I have owned have exhaust tubing to run out-of-doors. I ran one load and hope-to-God they take it back without taking an arm and a leg too. This thing is miserable.

The HarvestRight Medium freeze dryer is pretty much a $3,000 hunk of junk and basic customer service is lacking. We purchased it from Ace Hardware in mid June 2022. After 3 days of use, the unit began leaking oil. It was clearly a bad part. We went back and forth with customer service many times. Our point person was not responsive and no one else could find any notes from previous calls. It was like starting over every single time. And rarely did anyone follow through with promised call backs. Many weeks later, HarvestRight finally agreed that the original part was bad and said they would send us a new one. The catch, its back ordered for an unknown period of time. So two months later after just three days of usage and far more time put into just trying to resolve the issue with HarvestRight, there it sits. Will it ever work again? I hope so, because so far the usage cost is running at $1,000 per day.

Didn't work right out of the box. Couldn't even get past the vacuum. It could be an easy fix. It could be an o-ring. But after the experience I had with customer support, and seeing all the reviews telling future Harvest Right owners that your machine WILL stop working pretty quick into the experience, I decided that this was not a headache I wanted to deal with. So I asked for a refund.

Yep. I pay shipping - hundreds of dollars AND they want to BILL ME for being unsatisfied via some fictitious "restocking fee".

Maybe Harvest Right is a good company who just isn't ready to mass produce and stand by their product the way they should.

OR. Maybe they are scammers and they're just gonna take advantage of people when they are scared for as long as they can.

I have no idea. But time will tell. I will say this - when you are charging a "restocking fee" It's because you're getting so many people who are unsatisfied, you actually start losing money. Paying shipping - it's a bad move. But at least it's a REAL cost.

Restocking fee? That translates to "We know our product is bad and we're going to make you think real hard before you send it back for a refund".

Just my 2 cents.

Terrible. Machine breaks after a few weeks or months. Customer support cannot solve most people's issues. No refunds.

Purchasing a Harvest Right freeze dryer is one of our biggest regrets in life. Horrible waste of $3,000.

Please look at their page at the BBB. Awful.

Now there are Facebook pages dedicated to how horrible Harvest Right is.

I wish I had read reviews before spending over three thousand dollars on a Harvest Right Freeze dryer. Everything you read about their lousy service is right. My new F.D. failed after 6 weeks. I requested a service technician contact me. I have been instructed to rewire the unit twice.

I have sent several reports via thumb drive trying to trouble shoot the problem. One of the problems was a coolant leak. I sent the unit back to Utah and they recharged it, but did not fix the leak, so when it came back of course it failed on the first batch.

It has been six months of headaches and it still doesn't work. It's going to the dump.

Greetings! We have been using our Harvestright mid-sized freeze dryer for nearly a year when we experienced a vacuum error. The first thing we noticed was the error message on the display, so we checked the batch of fruit we’d been processing and it seemed to have a bit of moisture still present. Of course I blamed my sweet wife for over-using the machine and she blamed me for being born in the wrong century.

We contacted Harvestright by email and submitted a “ticket”. The next day a young-sounding woman with a charming name called to ask us about our issue. I’ve forgotten her name, but they each had clever and delightful names. I’ve come to the conclusion that all the service representatives are brothers and sisters and were named by the same parents.

Chad and Humberto were able to guide me to perform a series of tests on our unit and send them the data I collected on a thumb drive. Logically, they sent replacement parts that were the most likely, but least expensive, culprits for the vacuum leak.

At first, although they said it might be my vacuum pump, they sent me new gaskets and valves. More test data. Megan took over the diagnosis mission at that point and based on the test data, she immediately sent a replacement vacuum pump. It cleared up the vacuum issue completely and immediately. I had to retract the accusation I made at my wife in the beginning. However, she continues to insist that I might have fit in better if I had been born in the Nineteenth Century.

There you have it, you’re in good hands with the tech staff at Harvestright! Thanks guys!

Doug Barnes CF

My experience mirrors other disgruntled Harvestright freeze drier owners, wonderful food, terrible customer service. When th3e machine works it is a wonderful experience but if you expect it to keep working you had better line up with people outside of the Harvestright organization. If you are patient enough the "tech support" people will eventually call and talk to you. This has been my experience, talk only, no logical troubleshooting steps just sort of throw out some words and maybe something will stick. Find a group that will support you in your efforts to keep it working, that may be your only hope.

We have had a Medium Harvest Right Freeze-Dryer for a little over 3 years now. We love it! We have had a couple minor issues (control board shorted out) but they replaced it for a minor fee even though we were out of warranty.

If you realize this is a rather complex machine that needs regular maintenance, you will be fine. We built a back-flush for our oil pump that works great and is much easier than the manual filter system that comes with the unit.

If you are expecting something that is plug and play, this may not be for you, but it you recognize it needs some attention and you are willing to think outside the box to tweak a few things, it is a lot of fun and it preserves food wonderfully. We love ours and highly recommend it.