I purchased a Nest Learning Thermostat in March of 2022. All of a sudden in the middle of winter, my Nest thermostat was reading that it was 81 degrees in my house. I connected my Nest Sensor and the Sensor said it was 60 degrees, and it felt like 60 degrees. I troubleshooted the Nest by disconnecting it from Wifi, restarting it several times, but it would not read the correct temperature in my house. Even with the sensor being on, the Nest refused to allow my heating system to kick on. Being left with no choice, I called an HVAC professional. After lots of troubleshooting, it was determined that my Nest thermostat was broken and actively causing damage to my system. I contacted the Nest team immediately only be to met with "your wifi is causing the thermostat to read incorrectly" or "there is a hole behind your thermostat causing it to read 81 degrees." I relayed this to my HVAC professional and he said that neither of those were true, the thermostat had broken.
Left with no choice, he offered to replace the thermostat with one he had in his truck. As soon as he did that, my heating kicked on and my system was working wonderfully!
That being said, I am now trying to deal with Google customer service. I have been hung up on, disconnected, and lied to multiple times. I have called, chatted, and emailed. When I call they hang up on me saying that they have other customers to deal with, even though my issue was never solved or attempted to be solved. In the chat, they have called me a liar saying that I did not buy my thermostat through the Google Store, when in fact I did and I provide my receipt and google order number. They have even said that my device is not within warranty, when in fact it is, as I have checked.
The Google warranty states that I have 2 years for the warranty, and under that warranty they will accept the return of my google product in exchange for a refund of the purchase price I paid. Now, any time I state this to the google customer service, they tell me that there is no refund policy and that they can only do a replacement. Seeing as I have already replaced my thermostat, that is unacceptable. The warranty policy states there is a refund.
So, either Google has intentionally disregarded their warranty policy and will never issue refunds within the warranty period, or the customer service reps are ill informed.
Furthermore, in order to get a replacement thermostat, you have to give them MORE money in the form of a hold on your card for the full amount of a thermostat. Or, you could disconnect your current thermostat and wait 10 business days for a new one, so you would be without access to heat or cooling for those days. How is that an acceptable policy? It is the middle of winter (currently where I am), and if I did not buy a new thermostat, my house would be below freezing within a day, causing more damage to my house.
If you have read this far, I implore you to not buy a Nest Thermostat. The customer service experience has been abysmal, I am still waiting for an email back that I would supposed to receive last week. The Nest Thermostat is hated by HVAC professionals, and the interface is not user-friendly. If you check the google forums, you will see tons of others who have had my specific problem (thermostat reading 10+ degrees off) and google doing nothing about it.
I am still waiting to be contacted by someone at Google in regards to my warranty claim.
