My rant on poor customer service

nguyendot

So I purchased a new programmable 7 day thermostat from Home Depot before summer got here - in like May. I had done this with the intention of saving my girlfriend some money (she pays the electric).

Well I bought a RiteTemp 6080 7 day touch screen with wireless remote thermostat. It seemed pretty darn easy to set up. You can set it to change temperatures up to 5 or 7 times a day, for 7 days. It has a remote so you can manually adjust it if it gets too cold or to warm. Neat.

Anyways it worked wonderfully for about four months now, maybe five. In the past few weeks however, my girlfriend has come home to it reset to default settings, and flashing the battery symbol. It's supposed to run off the 24VAC from the AC unit, and use the batteries as backup. I know it has worked because I ran it without batteries to make sure. I checked all the voltages with a multimeter - about 25VAC. I'm not an HVAC tech, but I am a tech. Process of elimination works pretty well. I decided to swap in my old thermostat again, and it powered up just fine without batteries. The new one no longer gets power if you pull the batteries out. Weird right?

So I call RiteTemp - 877-505-2353
Mon - Fri 9am-12am (midnight) EST
Sat - Sun 9am - 9pm EST

I call them at around 9:30pm CST - and am immediately put on hold. After five minutes of hold or so, an automated message comes up and tells me they are under high call volume and that I need to leave a message. I'm automatically forwarded to a voicemail box. That is very strange, you should never be sent automatically to voicemail without getting to talk to someone first. Anyways, I leave a message, then call back. Six times. On the sixth time I finally get this lady with a condescending tone. I tell her I have a RiteTemp 6080 Thermostat that has failed. She automatically jumps to some conclusion, so I tell her to wait and let me explain what's going on first.

I tell her it no longer powers up without batteries and chews through a set every week. She asks if I have a C wire. I tell her yes, it's black and is hooked up per the users manual. She then automatically jumps to the conclusion that my AC unit is defective. I ask her why she jumped to that conclusion without doing ANY troubleshooting whatsoever. She tries to explain to me that the C wire sends power and that if the unit isn't powering on the AC unit isn't sending power. I tell her that the disconnect could be the AC unit, the cable, or the thermostat, and my testing points to the thermostat. She disagrees. I ask her why then, another thermostat without batteries works and powers on when swapped out. She's speechless. I ask her logically what would cause that. She says she doesn't know. I couldn't understand now that I proved the product is defective she couldn't explain what could have caused it.

I work in technical support, we need to have an answer for what could cause ...whatever. Anyways I ask to RMA this unit for a new one and she says they don't handle the warranty. She says it has a 5 year warranty and that I have to take it back to Home Depot.

Yeah let's see how that goes. It's 4/5 months old, well outside the 90 day return policy.

WilliamM2

In my experience, Home Depot will exchange it without any hassles. They once exchanged a leaf blower that failed after a year, still under warranty. I even got the new model.

Joe08867

It sounds like they don't give a hoot about your business.

PS: That is why I buy Honeywell.

nguyendot

I'm going to get a Honeywell instead. Doesn't look as nice but I know it will work.

Joe08867

nguyendot wrote: »

I'm going to get a Honeywell instead. Doesn't look as nice but I know it will work.

I agree, some other models are definitely nicer to look at, but I have had the same Honeywell for ten years without a hitch.

disneyjoe7

You get what you pay for....

nguyendot

I paid like $90 for that thermostat!

disneyjoe7

I paid like $230 for a Honeywell vision 6000 thermostat on website! Wasn't sold in stores, and I think it's around a $100 now.

nguyendot

I kind of want a centralized networked thermostat.. Any I should be looking at? It'd be cool to be laying in bed and just change it on the laptop.

nadams

Jeeze... do you really need a thermostat with a remote? If I want it a little warmer than programmed I just walk over and hit the buttons! My $40 Honeywell programmable has been working fine for 2 years. Runs off 2AA batteries and I put a set in once a year. Guess that's the advantage to keeping things simple!

schutz2106

That would be hard at my house with the wife being able to change the settings via laptop... At least now I see her go over and mess with it and then I know to follow and change it back.