Google's Nest thermostats can't work out that the clocks have gone forward and customers are complaining

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nest thermostat

Business Insider

People in the UK have discovered their Nest thermostats have failed to notice the clock change, Digital Spy reports, and customers have taken to forums to complain. The clocks went forward at the weekend and everyone lost an hour's sleep.

Nest, a company owned by Google, sells smart thermostats that work by learning user habits, and running schedules set by customers. They can be controlled via your smartphone, so you can tell it to warm up your home before getting back from a weekend away, for example.

But they've failed to account to the clock change and people have been complaining about the fact they've had to manually intervene on the Nest community forum.

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"The switch to BST seems to have confused my Nest! I have a manual schedule setup, auto schedule is disabled and the Nest didn't come on at the new time this morning!" writes one user.

It appears the devices have changed times for the screens on the device, but have failed to properly change the clock in the system that controls turning on and heating up houses.

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Another user said: "Mine has adjusted the time OK and the schedule is the same but the heating now comes on and goes off an hour later - i.e. set for 7am this morning but came on for 8am. Set for 4pm this afternoon and showing that it will come on for 5pm."

This person is really upset about it all:

Countless others have added that they've experienced the same problems. They're waking up, and coming home to, cold houses. One customer managed to sort it out by setting his location to Belgium, Digital Spy mentions - but the issue hasn't been properly resolved by the company. We've asked for comment and will update this post when we hear back.

This time-sensitive drama isn't the first issue Google has had with Nest. Last year, Business Insider's Jay Yarow encountered problems when his Nest started malfunctioning. It turned his house into a sauna over Christmas 2013, and it came to light that the WiFi gadgets require certain wiring in properties to power and function as they're designed to.

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More recently, a Google employee posted a video of his Nest Protect smoke alarm that just wouldn't shut up. The user called it a "terrible, buggy product." In the past, Google had to recall around 400,000 of the products due to other complications. On Amazon, many have given Nest pretty bad reviews.

Here's the angry video:

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