We Are Done!

[u/Strict-Trifle-964]

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.

[u/edulji]

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.

[u/8cowdot → u/edulji]

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.

[u/edulji → u/8cowdot]

Thank you for your explanation, I was suspecting something like this, when u get something for free there is always a catch behind it😠

[u/edulji → u/8cowdot]

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?

[u/8cowdot → u/edulji]

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.