Fun with the Nest Smoke Alarm
So I get a notification on my phone today that my (relatively newly installed) Nest Protect smoke alarm is going off and there is “smoke in the hallway.” This happens to be the day we have a cleaner in in the morning and nobody else is in the house. Going into the app, I saw that the alarm had been “hushed” (presumably by the cleaner) so I immediately suspected that house was not, in fact, burning down. Got in touch with the cleaner and she reported that there was no smoke but that the alarm kept going off. Luckily I was able to come home and check out the situation. Indeed, when I came home the alarm was freaking out and the air was completely clear. I took the unit outside just to be sure and it still kept going off. I turned the unit off and then on again (channeling the IT Crowd) and still the alarm was going off. So I called customer service. I found the customer service number buried on their web site (and also a US number with no dialing prefix so I had to know how to dial it – not ideal for a UK customer). Once I got through to an agent, they were super-helpful (even though it was the middle of the night for them), took me through a check-list and swiftly arranged for a replacement unit to be sent out to me. I’m still not sure whether the unit was faulty or if it was something the …