Are all arc fault breakers just generally overly sensitive?

We're in a new construction home, just finished last year. Our builder subbed out most of the electrical. They have GF/AF breakers on a lot of circuits and several of them have been a pain. My builder is an old school guy and in most cases his solution is to dump the AF breaker and put in a standard breaker and if needed a GFCI outlet. This is what we did with our washer/dryer combo; it was consistently tripping the GF/AF breaker when it would kick into it's ludicrous speed spin cycle, especially if the machine vibrated a lot.

But we've also had simpler items trip GF/AF breakers occasionally like vacuum cleaners, an electric recliner, a freezer, and others.

yep.  they are code and they trip fast from any "arc" the appliance might give off.  "saves live". they say

I had my panel replaced and inserted arc fault breakers in for the full house.  I was told by some folks that they were overly sensitive and tripped over random BS.  I did the swap 5 years ago.  In my experience, I have almost zero nuisance trips.  We run vacuum cleaners and food processors, microwaves, computers, lights, power saws, my mill and lathe, and all the usual home electronics and power tools.

The only issues I had was one specific circuit in a downstairs spare room with a bunch of computers and network gear.  About once every 4-6 months that circuit would trip for no reason.  Through process of elimination, I found one desktop computer on the circuit, when I unplugged that and plugged it in on a different circuit, the nuisance tripping stopped completely.

Mine are square D with yellow reset buttons on them.

AF breakers are a solution looking for a problem just do away with them. I read somewhere that there is talk about removing them from the code

Yep this.

I think that's pretty much my builder's feeling on them. But then when I started having issues with so many of them I started to question if it was really the AF breakers or something else about the installation.

Had a very odd experience in the basement. We have most of the basement outlets on the same circuit. Not much is plugged into them. We bought a new freezer and plugged it in down there. Every couple days, the GF/AF breaker was tripping after that. We don't go down there every day, the only reason we even knew is because the internet modem is in the basement plugged into the same circuit, so we'd lose the internet each time. My initial thought was replace the GF/AF breaker with just a GF breaker. Well when we did that, the circuit was tripping within about 30 seconds pretty consistently. Temporarily we've now replaced that breaker with a standard breaker and it's been fine ever since. My builder felt that the freezer should really ideally have its own circuit, so at some point, tentatively that's the plan.

There is one problem they solve pretty well.  

Old houses were wired with 2 conductors and no ground wire.  Many modern electrical things have 3 prong plugs.

The ghetto fix back in the 90s was to buy the little adapter you plug into a 2 prong outlet that let you plug in 3 prong devices.  You just had to hope nothing went wrong or the device could shock you.  The ghetto adapters are still available at the local dollar general store, and I'm sure plenty of homes have them.

Per the electrical code, you are allowed to replace your 2 prong outlets with 3 prong ones.  You must protect the circuit with an arcfault breaker and you're supposed to put little stickers on the outlets that let users know the ground is not connected.

The price to rewire a house to add in grounds to every outlet is cost-prohibitive unless you are already renovating it.  Using those ghetto adapters leaves the user at risk of being shocked.  Arcfault breakers in this situation is a happy compromise of affordable and protecting the user from shocks.

I would never have a refrigerator or a freezer on a GFCI outlet or an arc fault breaker. I don’t care what the code says. If I needed inspections, I’d get through the inspection and then take them out.

Friend of mine recently listed his house and some people bought it. They had an inspection and I was helping him with the list of things they wanted fixed. Their inspector wanted a GFCI outlet  on the basement sewage ejector pump. I told him that was a bad idea. We talked to the realtor who said if he wants a GFCI, put it on. I shook my head and we installed it.

HaHaHaHa

Your post would be great if it wasn't using "Arc fault" in place of "Ground  Fault".  You are describing a major violation that, more importantly, wouldn't protect from ground faults!

I suspect this is more common than you'd think.  If an electrical company does a crap installation with loose connections, those absolutely will trip the Series protective portion of the combination arc fault circuit breaker.  The solution is NOT to just put in a bunch of non-compliant crap, it's to diagnose the issue and get it fixed, or replace the AFCI breaker itself if it's actually failed.

Just get rid of them. They solve problems that don’t exist