Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased 2 Nest 2nd generation thermostats from the company store this summer. I am an engineer who in the electronics industry. I am tech savvy, build computers, troubleshoot networks, and fix most everything around the house myself. I liked the look and concept of this product. A thermostat that programs itself, looks great, is easy to operate, and links directly to my multiple iPads and iPhones. There is even a plugin that makes it integrate with my MiCasa Vera home automation controller. It seemed like the perfect fit for our high tech AZ home. I love technology and understand that new products have growing pains, I usually only write positive tech reviews, but enough is enough... The decision: We had two old tan box thermostats on our walls. They were programmable, but barely so. When our electric bill hit $500 over last summer enough was enough. We invested in two nest thermostats. The installation: I installed the thermostats myself. I had a few questions so I took a picture of my wires and emailed it to nest. Installation support was good. I was able to get them running within about an hour. There was a minor issue with changing the o to b on one of my systems to get it to cool instead of heat. In AZ in August this is important... First sign of trouble... I came home from work a few days after installation and on the main house system the fan was blowing but no cooling was on even though the thermostat was displaying blue indicating cooling demand. I turned the thermostat on and off and this resolved the issue. Concerned, I called tech support and the advised me to reaload the software. Really? Ok... Whatever. I did this and a few weeks later the issue happened again. Does not seem like it was ever resolved. More trouble... Woke up @ 3am to 85 degrees on our bedroom system. Bedroom nest was off with green flashing light. After trying multiple resets I was able to get cooling working so I could get some sleep. This worked ok for a day or so, but I noticed that the fan wire was no longer registering power. Soon afterwards my system was stuck in heat! In AZ! In August! I called a technician to come out. First guy was not familiar with nest so needed to get another guy the following day. Next guy installed a relay to isolate the fan wire from the logic board and a jumper to reverse the polarity of the reversing signal. Troubleshooting indicated a bad o/b terminal. Called nest support and after 30 minutes on the phone they sent me a new back plate. This arrived after a couple days I installed it, removed the jumper, and the system was fine. Total extra cost $250 for troubleshooting and 4 hours of my time. Wifi issues... I have a fairly standard network with two apple airport base stations. One is bridged to the other so they operate like a single unit. My bedroom nest would now drop connection every 10 minutes or so. Very frustrating. I tried many things to fix and spent hours on the phone with support. Finally the issue stopped. None of my other wifi devices have trouble like this. They just work. Still not sure why this happened or what fixed it. More issues... Now back to the main house system. Woke up and living room was warm. Fan blowing, ac off. Service found bad capacitor and replaced but fan still blowing continuously. Traced issue to bad g terminal on nest base station. After 45 minutes on the phone with tech support (even though I told them the diagnosis from the start) they agreed to send out another base plate. Fan still running continuously... Checked tracking and base station was shipped ups ground! Why would they do that? Called back and after another 30 minutes on the phone they sent another base plate overnight. This one arrived today and fixed the issue. Now we are 2 for 2 on bad base plates within the 1st 3 months!!!! Another 4 hours and $150 spent on troubleshooting. More wifi trouble... Now the living room nest is having wifi trouble like the first one. Tried a bunch of initial troubleshooting and resetting procedures with no luck. Very frustrated... Dread calling support and going through their standard questions when I already know there is no issue with my equipment... Just shoot me... All in all, this could be a great product, but implementation is poor, and there are problems with the base plate circuitry. I have read other similar posts and it is not clear if the issues are resolved. With regards to wifi this is very frustrating and ridiculous. Wifi should just work. I have top of the line routers and great signal throughout. Why all the issues?? With regards to service, I wish that if there was trouble they would dispatch an expert to my house for repair. The best I seem to get is technicians with marginal knowledge of the product who ask me to deal with nest because they do not have the time to talk to support. Then, I need to pay them for their trouble while I wait for nest to send parts that I need to install. Why do the technicians not have base plates already available given all the issues people are having? I still have my thermostats, but 2 base plates, several hundred extra dollars, and multiple hours later I am far from excited about my thermostats. Instead, I wonder when the next troubleshooting session will start and what will happen next. With their Apple roots I would have expected that the founders would strive to make a product that "just works". Unfortunately, for whatever reasons exist, that seems not to be the case. UPDATE 10/31/13 Based on a hunch and some research I was able to fix the wifi problem myself by adding a common wire. Both units are now working. It seems that for compatibility reasons these thermostats bleed power from the control wires in an attempt to not require a common, which not everyone has, but my experience is that a common is necessary to supply power for the wifi / display / etc... If the thermostat senses low power it appears to disable wifi first, which explains why it cuts in and out. I did notice that a Nest representative commented on my review which is nice and shows that they do care about how they are perceived. However, I never received any follow up. UPDATE 11/20/13 Nest did finally contact me a few weeks ago. Since everything is working now there was not too much to talk about. I told them that my expectation is that there should be no more issues and asked if I had the latest and greatest backplate revisions and if it would be worthwhile to send someone out to perform some diagnostics. They said I was up to date and this would not be necessary. They did ask me for my repair invoices and I sent them in. Have not heard back and not sure if anything will come of it. UPDATE 12/1/13 We had another wifi dropping issue. This time I noticed that both Nest thermostats were using or trying to use the same ip. So, I made them static using the MAC address and the issue went away. Still nothing from Nest on my invoices.