Carmen Ensinger

I’m beaten…

I hate to admit it…but this weather has got me beaten. I tried; I really did. I just couldn’t take the heat – pun totally intended.
To catch you up in as few words as possible, I got ticked off when I got my Ameren bill so I decided I would stop using my air conditioner in an act of defiance.
The free Google Nest thermostat that Ameren offered came in a mere two days. I was so excited that I tore into it, watched a YouTube video on how to install it and I was ready to rock and roll.
Seemed easy enough. Only six color coded wires to deal with. I took a picture of the wires and everything and it explained what each of them were for. The video even explained how to actually set up the thermostat since everything has to be connected to an app these days.
Actually, since I’ve been trying to reconnect my current thermostat to my router for a month, I’ve had the cover off quite often so I know what the insides look like, but I had never noticed one thing – the color-coded wires are held into the little holders with tiny little screws.
Wouldn’t you know I didn’t have one of those little screwdrivers in the set of them that I bought at Dollar Tree. Perhaps I had one in my junk drawer. If I did, it would probably take me an hour to find it and it was getting hot in the house.
To my surprise I found it in less than 30 seconds. Someone upstairs was on my side for a change. It was a nice little thing with a long rubber body on it. I removed the first five but when I get to the sixth and last one, I guess the glue holding the rubber to the body came undone and the stupid thing just kept turning in my hand.
I worked for 20 minutes on that last screw to no avail. I almost put that thing through the palm of my hand trying to get it out and nothing worked. I finally ended up getting a pair of pliers and just yanking it out.
At least it is off now and I can get the other one installed – or so I thought.
What I didn’t realize is that behind this big wide Honeywell thermostat was a big box holding the wires. The Google Nest is this tiny little two-inch disk and it was too small to fit – there was no area to even screw it to the wall. I needed a face plate.
No problem, I will just go to Walmart and get one. But, me being the smart person I am, I’ll call first. Good thing I did because they didn’t carry them. Neither did Lowes, or Home Depot or any other store for that matter.
Know why? Because the ones they sell in stores come with their own faceplate. The ones Ameren were giving away didn’t have a faceplate with them. I guess you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth – I just wish the horse had come with a saddle.
Anyway, I had a friend order one from Amazon and it came three days later. It just barely fits the huge hole on the wall but I get it on, get the wires connected and go down and throw the switch and get ready for the second part – setting it up.
Little did I know that the electrical wiring would be the EASY part.
There are no buttons on these new-fangled things – there weren’t on my old ones either, but at least there were facsimile buttons that I could push. On this one, there was a facsimile dial on the side you were supposed to swipe.
Long story short – I worked for over an hour and never could get it to work. I ended up just putting the old thermostat back on. Oh, forgot to mention that I bought an eyeglass kit that had a “cheap” little tiny screwdriver with it and was able to get the screw undone.
I figure I will wait till it gets cool this fall when it doesn’t really matter.
Now, the fan I thought I got the great deal on – I received a cheap piece of crap. Box arrived all taped up. There was no remote, no instructions and missing parts.
I purchased it from Wayfair so I began a “chat” that ended up in an email. They turned me over to the place that I actually bought it from. I told them it wasn’t the fan I bought. They assured me it was. That was when we decided I was missing all this stuff – like the remote, etc.
They send me the instructions via pdf and tell me to identify the missing parts. It had no parts identified. By this time, we had been going back and forth for three days and they were nice, prompt in answering me and all.
But this did it. I told them, I couldn’t do that and it was getting hot and to either just get a packet out with the remote and the needed hardware out of another fan and send it to me or refund my money.
That ended our correspondence. Sunday, I contacted Wayfair again and told them what happened and they didn’t seem surprised. She told me once you mention refund they stop corresponding and turn it over to them. She promptly refunded my money back to Paypal. Told me to wait two weeks to see if they asked for the fan back and sent me money to send it back and if not I could do what I wanted to with it.
I purchased a much nicer one at Wal-Mart for less money anyway and this one is unusable with the missing parts anyway. I thought I was getting this $80 fan for $43. Never again. I learned my lesson.
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■ Carmen Ensinger is a pet-lover and a reporter for River County News – Better Newspapers.