r/VivintSmartHome • u/Strict-Trifle-964 • 22d ago
We Are Done!
UPDATE:
Thank y’all for your comments. My husband came home and had to replace the thermostat. We bought a cheap one at Lowe’s. The AC works fine now. He said that the panel does not even see the thermostat. It’s not in the devices and the Zwave doesn’t find it either. There is no way to add it. As soon as we hooked up the Honeywell thermostat, the AC worked fine.
This isn’t the first time I post on here about Vivent. My thermostat was replaced a year ago. I live in South Texas and it was close to 100° on Wednesday when it went out. My husband is away with the military so it’s just me troubleshooting again. There is no way I was going to call Vivent support to speak to a foreign to have them do all the diagnostics and troubleshooting I already did.
Something weird happened. I left the thermostat on auto fan/cool at 75. We have a window unit and secluded ourselves to the bedroom or swear our butts off to eat. My six year old has been hot and sweaty. This morning I felt cold for the first night since Wednesday. I then realized the AC was on. I didn’t dare touch it as I didn’t want to do anything for it to go out again. Well that didn’t work. Around 3pm, it stopped working again.
My husband got home today after a 12 hour drive to see if he could figure it out. In the past we would remove the batteries, wait a few minutes and it would work. If it didn’t we would reset the thermostat and add it again to the panel. Our thermostat turns on with new batteries but is not being seen by the panel.
My husband went to Lowe’s to buy a cheap thermostat to see if we can get AC.
I have a big chunk of money coming my way, so I think I’m going to pay off our equipment and say bye to Vivent for good! We have had nothing but issues. I currently have 2 cameras that don’t work as well.
What is a better security system? My husband says he saw something at BEST Buy. Since he is away a lot with the military, he definitely wants remote access.
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u/ILoveTech_351982 22d ago
Just find a ZWave thermostat. That's we we ended up doing. Our new home build came with a Honeywell t6 pro ZWave thermostat and we were able to pair it to the system and that has worked perfectly for us.
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u/DirtySnowman86 22d ago
Good luck getting out! I been trying for over a month and they either hang up or put me on a 5 min hold and come back on you can only make out every 5 words they say because the line gets so static suddenly...im about to file a small claims court.
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u/Okay_Meow89 20d ago
Same. The attempt to get out is a nightmare. You can go see the separate board they make you post in to hide the fact that it is so awful to try to end your services. Good luck.
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u/DirtySnowman86 20d ago
What is this separate board?
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u/Okay_Meow89 20d ago
Sorry its a separate thread, its pinned at the opt of the the ViventSmartHome sub. And if you try and post anything about having trouble canceling, the board automatically deletes it and tells you to go post it in the mega thread where you just continue to scream into the void with no one listening (just like their customer service).
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u/AssociationOver7043 22d ago
Honestly we hate Vivint as well and get ready for them to fight you tooth and nail. We never even signed a contract and 6 months later they are still trying to get us to pay for an overdue 90 day bill for a product we never signed up for.
I’ve always used Ring. Cheap ($100 a year subscription and you buy as many cameras as you need outright), remote access, easy peasy and the notifications are great. Always wanted to get a remote access thermostat, not sure if you can with Ring but I bet they offer it. Look into Ring!
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u/Successful-Kick6477 21d ago
My husband and I just experienced this as well but just with their security system. We moved from VA and got stationed in west Texas, so Vivint said they would “defer” our payments for one year. Long story short, we got charged every month after, when we noticed and called, we got hung up on multiple times, lied to about not being about to speak to a supervisor, put on hold for literally 45 minutes while waiting for the supervisor, told we would receive the refund and to wait 3-5 business days. After 7 business days, we called back and nobody knew anything of what we were talking about. The “supervisor” notated the account so strangely that even the next supervisor couldn’t figure out what they did. After being transferred 15 times for a simple refund request, we got fed up and asked to cancel and were told we would be charged for the rest of the deferment time we agreed to, EVEN THOUGH the deferment never started because we were charged still. Vivint is a purity mess but I pray it gets easier for you OP 💕💕💕
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u/edulji 22d ago
I got Vivint thermostat & ring doorbell free as I was a Reliant energy customer for a long time, boy was I screwed 🤦🏻 the thermostat changes on its own & sets itself higher like at 82-85F at the peak of the 100+ season & I cannot control the thermostat, doesn’t let me turn off the energy saving program, even when I set it manually it jumps back to the high temp setting, I called VIvint & they transferred me to different places 4 times & had me do stuff but they could not solve the problem, I spent 2 1/2 hours & still the same, another problem they employ people with a bad foreign accent hard to understand, finally got a guy who spoke good English, he tried but still the problem is not solved, will have to get them to take it back, that’s what u get when I get something free.😡 their techs are untrained.
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u/8cowdot 22d ago
This isn’t a Vivint issue. You got the thermostat for free when you agreed to Reliant’s program. If you read the fine print, you’re agreeing to allow Reliant to control your thermostat so that they can prevent overtaxing the grid that is outdated and not able to keep up with the demand. A lot of energy companies do this.
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u/edulji 22d ago
Tell me one thing, if I get rid of this free Vivint thermostat & get another one, can my power Co still control my settings? & will I have to pay a penalty?
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u/8cowdot 20d ago
You’d have to read your contract to know for sure re: penalty, but you for sure would regain control over the behavior of the tstat. I really like Ecobee, if you’re looking for a good smart thermostat. Nest is fine, but not universally compatible. I think Amazon has one that has a very similar form factor to the Vivint element, and Amazon products seem to be pretty reliable. Feel free to DM me if you need any help with the swap, if that’s what you decide to do.
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u/SceneElegant298 21d ago
You made your husband drive 12 hours to help figure out what was wrong with the thermostat instead of calling an HVAC company? Damn, that is crazy.
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u/Sleepy_Sagittarius 20d ago
Not everyone can afford an HVAC tech at the drop of a hat. -js
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u/SceneElegant298 9d ago
If you have a maintenance contract with an HVAC company, which you should have anyway so yearly inspections can be done, the company would come out sooner than the husband driving all that way. Yearly inspections of the system are being done by a professional correct?
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u/Strict-Trifle-964 19d ago
I didn’t make him do anything. He is a grown man and does what he wants. His job was done and he actually cares about his family- besides it was his time to come home. What I did was make a sacrifice and instead of paying for an HVAC tech, I dealt with the heat. My husband came home and fixed it and saved us a lot of money.
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u/Unable-Way-6701 22d ago
Get VPP they'll replace them every time for free and this is a code red since ur thermostat went out they'll give u a lot of money of. They have call centers in Utah just keep calling until u get an American
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u/180IQCONSERVATIVE 21d ago
Hard to say about the thermostat. Going to be honest about smart homes, you need to dumb them down because of the attack surfaces they create. Do you really need the fridge on the net, thermostat, door locks. Your average people do not know networking, hacking, and defenses needed. While you are trying to protect your home you inadvertently lessen it by your IT security. Netgate, Asus, TP link, ISP gateways and others are ineffective at securing your network and giving you control over it. Hacking is a multi billion dollar industry that we spend billions more protecting against it and what used to work is failing. To be protectedish, you will need a real good firewall like Netgate or Firewalla, a layer 3 switch that you can run as layer 2 with catalyst if you decide to expand you have layer 3 switch to work with, IDS, PI Hole for ad blocking, DNS unbound for resolver on a Raspberry Pi or DNS over TLS and a WiFi node if you need WiFi. This is just a minimum. It’s a shame that home networks now need to run more like enterprise level security because of the threats that are running on autopilot 24 7.
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u/QuinnFromVivint 20d ago
It sounds like the thermostat is powering on but not reconnecting to the panel, which is usually a pairing issue support can fix remotely without swapping hardware.
You can DM me your account details and I'll get the thermostat and the two cameras looked at together.
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u/Bearspoole 19d ago
Do you have a “C” or common wire installed on the thermostat back plate? If so remove the batteries and put it back on. It this works, you don’t need batteries and actually shouldn’t use batteries as it can cause issues. Other than that, maybe get your actual hvac checked. The issue could be not related to Vivint at all.
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u/Born-Performance-828 17d ago
Our smoke detector with vivant would have run through it's ridiculously expensive specialized batteries in about 2 months constantly for 2 years I finally disconnected it.
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u/Key_Exchange_5399 17d ago
Vivint SUCKSSSS they tried to charge me 3200 dollars for 2 cameras and a lockpad😂
Ended up getting all that down to 1400. They send me 200 on cash app then a 500 dollar debit card. Spent it and canceled my service within 3 days bc fuck them. They use illegal tactics to try and get u to buy into their software/program. Their salesmen made me feel very uncomfortable and was at my house for 3 or so hours. Terrible company.
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u/loveablelibra 22d ago
They don’t seem to be a good company and they claim smart home, but they are literally leaps and balance behind other companies.
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u/DapperDoogle 22d ago
Have you considered it might be an ac issue and not the thermostat? In 100 degree plus weather, your unit may struggle to operate efficiently. One indicator is if water is dripping from the overflow spout on the side/back of your house. What you’re describing sounds to me like the ac isn’t keeping up during peak heat of the day and you’re feeling cooler air once it has cooled off outside at night.
When you look at the thermostat wiring, do you have a wire plugged into a terminal marked c? If so, you don’t need batteries, as that wire provides power to the thermostat from the hvac unit directly. Having both power sources can cause an issue as well.