I am writing this to tell newcomers to beware of buying Google products.
The sum of this story is that I was experiencing a lot of short cycling problems on my heater unit. I worked through all of the requests with nest support and had to keep explaining that the thermostat was the problem and not my system. I was ignored and bounced around from tech to tech.
One day I was unable to control my Nest from my mobile device. When I arrived home, I was greeted with a W5 error. I contacted Nest again and went through a healthy amount of troubleshooting and resetting the device till the technician finally gave me the ok to have another thermostat sent to me.
The "new" Nest arrived, and I immediately noticed the scratches on the screen. I figured it was a remanufactured device, but at this point, I did not care as long as I was able to heat my house. I swapped the unit out with the refurbished Nest and ........ nothing. The unit was stuck in a boot loop.
I again contacted Nest support. Their resolve after troubleshooting the device was for me to send the Nest back, but the problem was that even though my original Nest had a W-5 error it was still able to manually adjust the heat. They proceeded to tell me that I could not send back the second nest instead but instead, I would have to send the working Nest back, get it processed, and then start another RMA for the second Nest that would not boot. After explaining to them that I would not have heat if I did that route they insisted that that was the only way for me to receive a working thermostat. After going back and forth to find another solution support suggested that I buy another thermostat in the meantime. I received the RMA shipping label, affixed it to the box, and went to my local FedEx dropbox.
I waited a week or so before noticing that the $200 that I used to get the thermostat to me sooner instead of sending my original back. I did this so I could confirm that the replacement worked before I sent the original back. I checked the tracking and noticed it was not scanned in or picked up. I called FedEx the next day. They told me I needed to wait 7-10 days before they can do anything. After going back and forth with FedEx for about two weeks I finally was able to speak to someone that offered some help. I was told that Google would need to fill out a lost item form and reference case "XXXXX". My suspicions about this dropbox location are that packages were being stolen, but they would not give me any details about it and repeated that Google would need to contact them and reference my case.
I again contacted support to explain the situation to support. After explaining the situation, I was told that it would need to be decided by the management and I needed to wait ~5 days.
I waited till I received an email that stated I needed a receipt before they can help me. At this point I am dumbfounded, I have explained that it was an unmanned dropbox but they insist that I need a receipt or the device to be delivered or they can not do anything.
At this point, I am out $200, one of the thermostats is lost, and one in my possession that does nothing. I have opened 9 cases in total since my initial short cycling issue and each experience was worse and worse.
Since then I have picked up an Ecobee and I haven't had an issue.
