Nest

We recently received our 2^nd Gen Nest and could not be more pleased. I was very disappointed to learn that when we finished our house in the mountains, we could not use a Nest because we had a boiler system rather than HVAC for heating/​cooling. We weren’t going to plunk down the cash for one in our townhouse either. Luckily, we just moved into a new house with normal HVAC and finally I could purchase this slick looking, nifty little gadget that my parents and a few friends have owned and raved about since they first came out. It worked straight out of the box within minutes and has continued to do so for the past few weeks with very little adjusting at all. Because we are frequently out of town on the weekends, it’s incredibly convenient to control our temperature as we come and go via the iPhone app. Because it’s scary smart and learning our habits, it’s requiring fewer adjustments over time. When you change temps, it tells you how long it will take to reach that temp. We’ve also received emails noting our current energy and financial savings, as well as suggestions for how to save even more on our bill by making small changes to our heating and cooling schedule that we would probably not notice. We will recoup the $ 249 cost quickly, making the investment totally worth it. We could never get our previous programmable (and ugly) thermostats to work quite right (does anyone?), our bills were higher and they were a general pain in the ass to operate. If only everything in life was as easy to set up and use as the Nest! I did also read that the 2^nd Gen Nest now works on some boiler systems so I may luck out with finally getting them in our other house too. Their CS is great. I called thinking mine had a hairline crack in the glass and it turns out it’s just a sensor.

2012 Review #175:
If the iPod and your outdated thermostat had a baby, it’d be the Nest. The Nest is a beautiful, futuristic, circular thermostat that is, for all intents and purposes, a tiny robot that learns your environmental habits when it comes to the temperature of your house. I will say that I didn’t much care when my husband said he was buying a new thermostat; I did care when he mentioned it costs about the same as an iPod touch. I let it go once I realized that we might finally own a thermostat I actually understand.
Since Unilocal isn’t really about evaluating products, I’ll just say this: Nest takes minutes to install, is extremely well designed and easy to use, and basically learns your habits. If you leave for work for 8 hours, it will let the house cool down/​heat up to save energy. If you come home, it will adjust the temperature to whatever you have had it learn as a comfortable temperature. You can set it from your smartphone to warm up or cool down so the house is comfortable when you arrive. It knows when you wake up and when you go to sleep; it has a microphone to detect if there are people nearby so it should maintain current temperature. It sounds a little creepy, but it conserves energy and does a great job.
We had our first Nest right when they sold out and weren’t available anymore. Out of nowhere, our Nest stopped functioning. We’d had it for many weeks and it had been fine, and then out of nowhere it decided to stop working when it was 20 degrees outside, mysteriously after an automated software update. Over the course of 3 days, I spent over 4 hours on the phone with tech support. The first day was with a very kind gentleman who walked me through every possible thing and then finally conceded that we needed a new unit. This was on a Friday; he said he’d have it overnighted to arrive on Monday. I had to give a credit card number to hold its place but I was ok with that. Come Tuesday, there was no new Nest. I called tech support and got a poor woman on her 3^rd day in the job, having to deal with me, and I was not in a good mood. She wasn’t very well trained and eventually I basically begged for her to transfer me to an actual technician so she wouldn’t have to keep putting me on hold and I would stop getting frustrated. When I finally got an actual tech, he told me there was absolutely no record of my ever having called before, let alone the hours I spent troubleshooting with another employee. He then said we would have to go through it all over again, and he could not possibly send me a new unit because basically I could be making it up.
You can imagine my response; after a few cautionary words, he thoughtfully conceded and said he’d ship me (another) new unit. At one point he asked for my credit card number; I told him I had already provided it and he told me there was no record of it. I made sure to point out that having no record of me giving my credit card number to a stranger over the phone was not making me feel better. For as much grief as I directed toward one person, who was not at fault (I tried to use a good tone of voice, really) he did a nice job at conceding when appropriate and sticking to company policy as well. Sure enough, the next day we had a new nest, and it’s worked ever since. Product is great, tech support is iffy, but sticking to your guns will generally get a response in favor of the customer.