Nest Cam IQ replacement #2 installed
Back on January 15, 2019 I installed two Nest IQ Cams. February 7th, 2019 the one I’d mounted out back died with no evident reason. Nest sent me a replacement camera at that point and for roughly a year and a half I’d had a cam that shorted out when it rained (there was never water intrusion in the USB-C connector,) and if the power flickered at all in the neighborhood it went down until I unplugged it and plugged it back in.
TL;DR – some thoughts on Nest’s replacement policy/product
It usually chose Friday nights to go out, which is when I was able to (remember those days when you could leave the house? Ahhhhh) – recently it got worse, I think back in June I started talking with Google about how bad the camera had been behaving and they sent another one.
Once again, just the camera, not the power adapter or cable, which at time #2 for replacing a camera you’d think they’d consider the whole unit. Especially since it’s just this demon spawned camera and the other one (similarly placed,) has no issues.
So I got the camera, and it rained for two weeks straight. This particular camera is mounted in a place that I’m not getting on a ladder when it’s rainy, so yeah, long delay on my side but it was sunny today and I got down to it. Camera replacement in hand I went out and realized that since they just sent the camera and nothing else I needed to hunt down the Allan wrench that was going to work with it. Oddly I don’t keep things that small labeled.
Wrench obtained after 30 minutes of searching, and plugged right back into the USB power supply we’ve all sort of suspected is causing the power flicking lockups, but whatever man.
It seems that the inclusion of a three cent wrench that most likely will get returned by the customer would be something they’d look into as not everyone keeps all their manuals and tools meticulously placed. It also seems to me that it probably would be cheaper than shipping to replace everything in one shot. But you know, whatever.
It’s an interesting point of customer service that I can get most of what I need approved with a few tweets and an email at over a year from the problem date (yay,) but what arrives is somehow missing that dollar and twenty cents of product that would guarantee a success (boo).
