Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was shocked to hear recently that the man who suggested I buy a Nest thermostat and installed it for me 2 years ago says he no longer recommends them. He told me he had six fail last year. My own Nest worked perfectly for 18 months, but then it decided that my fan and humidifier should run 24/7. Not the end of the world, but I was out of town. A different point of failure and I’d have frozen, burst pipes, or maybe 150-degree temperatures inside. I contacted Nest, and after a long, long chat session they sent me a new base. I installed it and it didn’t make any difference. Then I installed my old non-Nest programmable thermostat and the furnace worked perfectly. Looking through the unit’s menus, I found that Nest issued a firmware update around the time the thermostat failed. I’m not sure if that was the problem, but we replaced the hardware and it didn’t help. Two big problems here: 1) Nest has been totally unresponsive since the new base failed to solve the problem. They were sending me emails and replying to mine up until the point I told them the new base did not work. Now nothing. I could call them, but they leave you on hold forever. I could chat with them, but the last chat session took 40 minutes. It’s still under warranty. They could reply to my emails. 2) Even if the service was wonderful, it was a mistake to buy this thing. The modern thermostat was invented in the 1830s. It is an extremely reliable, proven technology. In my 40 years of home ownership, I had never had one fail. Then I installed a Nest and gave my furnace all the reliability of a Windows 98 computer. And what did I get in return? I didn’t have to stand up and walk over to adjust the temperature. It did turn down the temperature when I wasn't home, but so does my old, $38 programmable. I spent $250 in this stupid thing, and it looks like I’m going to throw it away.