Discount Hunter 44668 Comfort Saver 7 Day Room Control Thermostat

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List Price: $103.99
Sale Price: $98.50
Today's Bonus: 5% Off

I have nothing but problems with the 44668 thermostat. I had the first one for less than a month and it started resetting itself. Hunter replaced it with a second one which after a few weeks lost communication with the remote sensor (had to reset unit), left the blower running in the house (had to reset unit), and finally stopped controling the system with an error 004. (Hunter Customer service didn't know what error 004 even meant).

Refusing to refund my money, Hunter is now sending me a third one. I politely told them that if I had problems with that one, I would escalate my problem within Hunter to demand my money back.

By the way, I ordered this through Amazon and CPO who is a Hunter distributor and I would like to point out their ridiculous '30 day money back guarantee' copy and pasted it says:

"All unused items can be returned within 30 days of shipment for a refund or exchange (unless otherwise noted at the time of sale). Items must be returned in their original packaging. If an item was shipped free of charge you will be billed for the cost of the original shipping."

Note the word 'unused'. How do you see if you like a thermostate, much less if it works properly, without using it? Statements like this discourage people from buying through the internet. I would have bought this at local retail but I couldn't find this particular model. If I had, it would be back to the store and I would have my money back.

I usually don't write reviews like this, but so far my experience with Hunter has been less than stellar.

I'll see if the third one works (which by the way takes almost two weeks for them to send).

TJ

9/15/09

Well, this saga started last May and I still can't get one of these thermostats to be reliable. I have tried three of them now and as of yesterday Hunter Customer Service is refusing to refund my money. I could write a book over what has occurred between now and last May when this started, but suffice to say that the people at Hunter Customer service in Memphis Tn are pretty useless and will say anything to try and make you go away. I could name names, but I won't. My last conversation was with one of the supervisors.

This morning I filed a formal complaint with the Tennessee Department of Consumer Affairs to see if they can mediate a solution for this. Its unfortunate that a company like Hunter who generally has such a good name for quality is being ruined by a bunch of incompetent people at their customer service center.

TJ

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I just bought two of these for only $69.95 each at my local Sam's Club. My problem with my regular thermostats is that they're located in the hallway/living area which are in the middle of my 2 story home. At night, the bedrooms (on the sides of my home) become either colder in the winter or hotter in the summer than the middle of the house so the thermostats don't control the bedroom temperature well. With this thermostat, I can program it to control the heater/AC by using the wireless remote sensors I keep in the bedrooms, making the bedroom temps just right. The thermostat also has it's own temperature sensor built in. During the day, we are mainly in the hallways/living areas so I have the thermostat use it's own temperature to regulate the living area temperature. Also, another awesome feature is this thermostat doesn't need someone to turn on the heater during the winter or the AC in the summer. You set it to turn the heater on if it's below a certain temp, say 72 and turn the AC on if it's too hot, like say 78. So your house will always stay between 72 and 78! It doesn't matter if you suddenly have a cold or hot spell in the spring time, the thermostat will accurately provide hands-free control of the heater/AC.

It also tells you to change the air filter after 500 total hours of heater + AC time.

The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is I had 1 defective remote sensor. My thermostat wouldn't pick up the defective remote sensor temperature. After debugging it for 1 hr, I called tech support and after 3 minute of talking with tech support, they agreed with me that it was defective and I had to exchange for a new one. I didn't have any thermostat program resetting problem like the other reviewer.

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Ok, here is the deal. I love the remote temperature sensor. It really compensates for only having one unit in a two-story house. However, for some reason the main unit arbitrarily resets its self or changes settings. I spent over an hour setting up a custom program and within a couple of weeks the unit reset and went back to factory defaults. I repeated the process only to have the same reset problem days later. I now have it set at 70 and leave it alone.

I am still happy with the second sensor but feel like the programmability option is a waste. I have called customer service but hung up before getting to a real person. I will be calling them again when I have more time to waste.

Honest reviews on Hunter 44668 Comfort Saver 7 Day Room Control Thermostat

I'll give you the summary first, because my review became quite long: After one day with this unit, I will say that it's a great thermostat. Programming it is fairly intuitive. If you need remote sensors because of lousy thermostat positioning or because you want to set up multiple heat zones in your house, this is the thermostat for you. My complaints are with the documentation, which is quite poor.

The full review: I received and installed my Hunter 44668 last night, and everything has gone smoothly so far. I'm pretty impressed. I would give this product a 5-star review, but the user's manual knocks it down to 4-stars overall. If I was rating it on the user's manual alone, I would only give that 2 stars. I can definitely understand why other people have complained.

There are inconsistencies and omissions in the manual that should never have made it to the publisher. It's like the manual was written by a college intern and never proof-read. Sometimes the button you're supposed to press is shown in-line with the text of a particular step. Sometimes the button is shown in a column to the left of the instruction steps. Sometimes the buttons pictured in the left column don't line up with the steps in which they're supposed to be pressed. Sometimes the button picture is missing entirely, and the button you're supposed to press has to be inferred from the section title! It's a complete disaster.

I was lucky because I had read through the entire manual TWICE before I tried to program the thermostat--I read it once online before I bought it because I wanted to see what people's reviews were talking about, and then again a couple days later after it arrived, before I tried to program it. By the time I got around to pushing buttons, I had come to terms with some of the inconsistencies in the manual, and was prepared to compensate for them during programming. The process went pretty much flawlessly, and I actually got the unit installed and running in record time (for me).

I figure there are probably 3 types of people installing this unit... 1) people with lots of previous experience installing setback thermostats who will only bother to look at the manual as a last resort if the unit does something unexpected, 2) people who take the time to study the manual and work through its shortcomings, and 3) people who are going to depend on the manual to be correct because they're reading it for the first time and following it step-by-step as they try to install it and program it. The first group will be fine, because the actual setup is pretty intuitive if you've installed these things before. The second group will be fine, as I've demonstrated myself. But if you're in the third group, this thermostat is likely to frustrate you massively, and I would actually recommend avoiding it based on that.

So what do I like about this thermostat? I like the remote temperature sensors! I have a counterflow furnace in my house, which means the heat registers are in the floors and the cold air return is in the ceiling. Some wise guy mounted the thermostat in the hallway directly under the cold air return. There is literally a wall of cold air exactly where the thermostat is mounted, and at that location no thermometer is capable of determining with any accuracy the actual temperature of the house. As soon as the furnace shuts off, the attic cools the cold air return duct, and cold air starts falling out of the ceiling right onto the thermostat. When the furnace runs, it can raise the temperature of the rest of the house 6-8 degrees. But with that wall of cold air in the hallway, the thermostat won't budge a single degree! I needed to get the thermometer out of the hallway. However, I didn't want to yank the wire up out of the wall and fish it down in another wall somewhere else to move the thermostat. The remote sensor included with the 44668 is exactly the solution I need.

If you're buying this thermostat specifically to use the remote sensor, then one thing you need to realize up front is that the remote sensor comes pre-configured as an outdoor thermometer and NOT as an indoor thermostat. Step one, while you're working through the Options prior to programming, is to reconfigure the base unit to correctly recognize the sensor as an indoor sensor. Once I got that straight, the programming went smoothly.

Next, the omissions. One cool feature of this thermostat is that for any given program setpoint, it can read a single sensor or an average of multiple sensors. This isn't fully explained anywhere in the manual, it gets only the briefest of mention. You control the feature with the "sensor" button, and at any point while programming the unit, you can press the sensor button to walk through all the options for that setpoint. The options are: the built-in sensor (BI), remote sensor 1 (R1), remote sensor 2 (R2), BI+R1, BI+R2, R1+R2, and BI+R1+R2. Very nice, but not in the manual. And there doesn't seem to be any guard against choosing sensors that don't exist. For instance, all the R2 options were available on mine, even though I don't have an R2 running.

Another omission in the manual is the jumper wire supplied in the baggie with the screws and wall anchors. OK, it's red-colored. That's as much info as you get (assuming you're not color blind), because it's presence is not mentioned anywhere in the section about wiring the unit. In the back of the manual, where the wiring diagrams are shown (why are the wiring diagrams separate from the wiring instructions?), the jumper is shown wired between the RH and R1/RC pins in FIVE of the six wiring methods pictured, even including the 2-wire heat-only setup that my house uses! But is it supposed to be there or not? Does the thermostat get damaged if it's not present? I have no idea whatsoever. The instructions didn't say to install it, so I didn't, and my furnace is running. I just have to hope no damage is being done. Unanswered questions.

So, if you've managed to read this far, I'll finish with one subtle point I haven't seen anyone else talk about... The display backlight. This unit has an electroluminescent display backlight (think Timex Indiglo), and it works great. A nice feature. However, the manual says the backlight is *powered* by the 24V power from the furnace. The manual doesn't come right out and say it, but the way I read it, if you have a millivolt control system, you're out of luck. The display backlight won't work for you at all. Something to be aware of.

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This product was just what I wanted. At night we only wanted to heat the bedroom with a small space heater and let the rest of the house stay cool. We programmed the unit to regulate via the remote sensor during sleeping hours and now the furnace keeps the rest of the house cool while our room stays toasty with the small monitor heater. Before it was a balancing act to keep the room regulated, then the furnace would kick on and the room would get way too warm.

Many people have claimed the unit is very hard to program. It is virtually the same as other programmable thermostats I have used. The most important part is to write down what you want the program to do before you start programming. Then take it 1 day at a time.

The only confusion I had was setting up the remote sensor. At first I could not select the symbol for "T1" (the auxillary sensor) for my nighttime program hours. The unit came pre-programmed as if the extra sensor was to read outside temperature. You cannot program the furnace based on outside temperature or it would run constantly! I had to go to the options menu and change the sensor settings. I changed the outdoor temp sensor channel to -(meaning no outdoor sensor) and that the external "T1" sensor was channel 15 (the channel on the display of my auxilary sensor). If you have 2 or 3 extra sensors, then you have to set each temperature to the corresponding channel on the various sensors. After I set the sensor up correctly, it allowed me to select "T1" for my nighttime program.

Again, decide what you want to do before diving into the programming. What worked best for me was using the "everyday" programming mode to set up all of the days the same. Then I went back through each day and made small adjustments based on our schedules.

It works like a charm and at this price, there is no other comparison to it. Even a standard 5-2 programmable thermostat will cost more! Kudos to MarkDownAlley for good pricing and fast delivery!