Currently on hold to talk to someone about my Nest thermostat.
The recording said: “Current wait time is less than fifteen minutes. This is very rare and we apologize.”
My Nest thermostat was going into Away Mode (raising the cooling set point) while my wife, a day sleeper, was present. So I disabled Auto Away Mode.
It was also not good at guessing our schedule, so I disabled that too and we’re using it as a non-smart thermostat for the time being.
That being the case, I raised the set point way up when we left town on Friday, expecting it to remain set high until I decide to set it down again.
Bored, killing time 300 miles away from home until we see a surgeon on Monday, I accessed my thermostat today to find it set to 74. Strange, since I turned off auto scheduling. A check of History shows that it “used more energy than normal” on Saturday, “due to weather conditions”. But it should have used little, if the setting had remained at 84 where I left it.
So, I’ve been talking to support, who has put me on hold three times so far, while they try to answer two questions for me.
1) Why, if auto-scheduling is disabled, did my thermostat set itself to a lower temp than I had set; and
2) How can I set it to Away Mode manually? The support site states several times that it is “easy to do with the mobile app” but I’ve been unable to find that setting. Once I find it, I suppose it will be easy to turn on Away Mode. But finding that setting is a challenge both for me and the support person who still has me on hold while she checks with others.
The answer I got to question one is that the thermostat will lower the temperature “if it sees it getting too hot“. Uh-huh. She suggested that I log in periodically to see if I need to lower the thermostat.
She checked with a senior tech and they confirmed that auto scheduling is indeed off. They have no idea why the set point has been lowered.
Finally, as I was finishing this post, Char from tech support called back. She’d figured out the setting of Away mode from the mobile app. It is indeed easy. What it is not is obvious. Not obvious that it is even a setting on the screen; it is not amongst the Settings.
Anyway, I was amused by the auto-announcement / recording that apologized for a wait time of “less than fifteen minutes“, it being rare and all.