Honeywell Thermostats

This post is for you homeowners out there. Last year I decided to get a new thermostat for our house. After a quick trip down to the Home Depot and I purchased a Honeywell thermostat (CT3600).

Installation was quite easy—connect a few wires, put in 3 AA batteries, and program your settings. This thermostat has a seven-day program capability. I can have different settings for each day of the week that lower the temperature when nobody is home. This saved us some money on our heating bills last winter. If you don’t have a programmable thermostat then crawl out of you cave and get one.

Now the bad news. Recently, the thermostat began going through batteries on a weekly basis. The replace battery light would flash and then the thermostat would shut off. This would be followed by complaints of “it’s freezing in this house!” After the second package of batteries was drained I called the company that services our furnace.

$90 later my furnace was cleaned and inspected. Everything looks great except the thermostat. It probably has a short somewhere and is draining the batteries each time they’re installed. The batteries should last a year. Just replace the thermostat is what the service guy told me.

Do you think I could find the receipt from a year ago? I called Honeywell to complain and tell them that there thermostats suck. After waiting for 10 minutes of listening to Christmas music and Honeywell ads that sound like they were read by adults with a grade four ed-u-ca-tion, I heard a human voice.

I told Brad (my service rep) how disappointed I was with my Honeywell thermostat. He assured me that there wasn’t a common problem with the model that I had. Then he asked me for my address and telephone number and put me on hold for 10 minutes!

I was so tempted to hang up but waited patiently. Finally, Brad came back on the line, apologized for the wait and explained that he had to authorize a replacement for me. Huh? I’m getting a replacement model? Yes.

After a 20 minute phone call, some simple questions, and a lot of patience, I’m getting a new thermostat delivered to my door in the next 7 business days. I was shocked. Customer service is alive and well at Honeywell. Bell Canada could learn a few things from these guys.

Posted in Observations at 7:26 PM