Update 29.11.2022: One of the thermostats is defective. It no longer closes properly, so heating is done even when the thermostat is actually switched off. 79 euros. At the bottom of saving money, there is also an addition. Perhaps tado will now pay for itself more quickly thanks to the unfortunately sharp rise in gas prices, but the defective devices do not really help.
Update 18.1.2022: After a repair of the thermal bath, the heating could no longer be controlled with tado. Although the tado app said that everything was running smoothly, the requirements did not reach the spa.
The emergency service of our plumber could not find the fault, and so the weekend was mainly characterized by looking at what the problem could be. In the end, it was a wire that had come loose from the Smart Thermostat. Although the colleague said that this could not possibly come from the maintenance, but that the cable simply detaches from the thermostat on the wall, well. But now a question arises: How can tado say that everything is fine if the connection is not properly established?
Update 8.9.2021: After almost 4 years, the Internet Bridge is in the bucket. Simply dead. Contacted support, a day later the answer came that I should please make a video of the problem. No sooner said than done, then we went to 2nd level support. And since it is older than 2 years, well, bad luck, warranty over, it costs 99€ new. As a result, the investment in the tado story will pay for itself even later, if at all. The claim of tado that you save money, I can deny that for myself. Even after 4 years, I won’t have recouped the original investment, and if something breaks again… But I have to praise the very friendly technicians with whom I wrote.
First of all: I wish I could join the storms of enthusiasm for tado, after all, I chose tado because I really believe that the system can solve my heating problem. So far, however, my experiences with tado have been mediocre to ok, and this is due to the system itself and also to the hotline and the suboptimal help texts. I hope that this report can help to prevent one’s own bad experiences with tado or to think carefully about what one is actually doing. I will update this article continuously. The system was purchased at the end of November 2017.
Content
- The problem: wood-burning stove versus heating control
- A short affair with Max!
- The Crowd’s Experiences with tado
- First unpleasant experiences with tado: The sales hotline
- Experiences with tado: The installation
- Can you really save money with tado?
- tado batteries empty after only 4 months
- tado Smart thermostat is crazy. And the rest, unfortunately, too.
- Conclusion: Experiences with tado
The problem: wood-burning stove versus heating control system
Let’s first come to my heating problem. First and foremost, I’m not interested in saving on heating costs, although that would of course be a great side effect, but about the fact that the old heating control system had a fundamental error in thinking. Everything was newly installed during a complete renovation in 2013 in a pre-Wilhelminian old building from 1855: gas boiler, pipes, heaters, thermostat, everything new. The mistake from the beginning was that the plumber didn’t really listen to our questions, especially whether it makes sense to put a thermostat for the overall control of the heating in the living room when there is a stove 3 meters away. My beginner’s logic: When the fireplace is on, the thermostat thinks it’s super warm and turns off the boiler. Living room warm, rest of the apartment cold. Well, you’re usually in the living room anyway, it doesn’t matter. And in the bedroom you should sleep cold anyway. During a renovation, you have 1,000 problems, and you trust every craftsman who even appears on the construction site. That was a mistake.
4 years later. Offspring. Born a little skinny. The midwife says that the old rule of 18 degrees room temperature does not apply here, the children lack the warming bacon. So the heating is on. Phew. There was something. And lo and behold, even if the oven is not on, I can’t get the temperature the way I need it. Because the living room faces south, the children’s room faces north. And even if it is said that it always rains in Hamburch, no, the sun shines here too, and then I don’t need to turn up the heating, it’s also so warm in the living room. The trick now would be that I simply turn down the heating in the living room, turn up the thermostat so that the boiler is on and supplies the children’s room. But it doesn’t really sound like control, more like a waste of energy, especially since the heating doesn’t even have to be switched on here. Update: One commenter found out that the iSense thermostat can also control the heating independently of the thermostat. So my investment in tado would not have been necessary at all. However, the heating control would still be inaccurate.
A brief affair with Max!
Next idea: I’ll try a smart thermostat, in this case from Max!. The nice salesman from conrad recommends this system to me because it is cheap. Preferably a wall thermometer plus the two smart heating thermostats, and the arbor is ready. The wall thermostat is intended to prevent the temperature sensors on the heater from going out from 21 degrees, which no longer exist in the middle of the room. At first, I believed, no, hoped that this was the solution. But it wasn’t. The system was unpredictable and sometimes heated up to 24 degrees, although it was regulated down to 19 degrees. And it didn’t solve my problem. Because if you wanted to turn on the stove in the living room, well. Then the thermal baths were just out. I couldn’t put it so high that it would have heated the children’s room. Quickly sold on eBay, by the way, the buyer reported after a year that a thermostat was defective; luckily I still had the receipt.
The Crowd’s Experiences with tado
In the days that followed, I learned more about heating systems than I ever wanted to. Our boiler is a Remeha Tzerra 28c that can communicate via the OpenTherm protocol. Until I looked closely, I had assumed that our thermostat in the living room communicated with the boiler by radio, but the iSense thermostat was actually connected to the boiler in the kitchen with a cable from the living room. But it’s also a pity, otherwise you could have just hung the thermostat somewhere else where it wouldn’t have been exposed to the heat of the oven. A wireless version would have cost at least 300 euros. But that would still have been inaccurate.
My next step was to call on Facebook to see who had experience with smart heating. The response was impressive. tado was the main recommendation, followed by elgato (falls flat because not everyone in the household owns an Apple device), Max! (there were also nasty contras), Coqon, Loxone (because you can solve several smart home stories at once instead of having an app for everything), innogy, hydraulic balancing and objections that it was complete nonsense to want to stuff your home with something like that at all. Unfortunately, some hadn’t bothered to read the thread completely at all and came up with platitudes. But good. All in all, a great yield. Since some friends had had good experiences with tado, I took a closer look at this system.
First unpleasant experiences with tado: The sales hotline
My research showed that tado could actually be the solution to my problem, because apparently a heating thermostat directly at the boiler can demand more power here. In the MediaMarkt I saw the complete set late Saturday afternoon, and since it was not yet 6 p.m., I thought that I could try out the offer of the great hotline. Can the tado Smart Thermostat handle the Remeha Tzerra 28c? On the net only contradictory information. On the German side, Remeha was not listed at all, but on the Dutch side, it was. What a pity. No one answered. Not even an automatic message. So I left the set in the store.
On Monday, I called tado first thing in the morning. And I won’t forget this call in a hurry. Before I could even finish my first sentence, I was interrupted. “Do you have a thermostat or…” and so on. No chance to describe my problem. Even when I pointed out to the gentleman that I would like to finish talking first, I was put in my place very rudely. At some point I was able to describe my problem, and now the brash telemarketer had to admit that it might have been better to let me talk first. No, he couldn’t guarantee that it would work with my Remeha-Therme. OpenTherm would also work with others, and in 95% of all cases blablabla. Yes. It is also on the website. I could have saved myself the call and bought it right away at MediaMarkt. I don’t like to buy there, because the much-quoted advice focuses on the devices that are currently in the warehouse by the pallet, but I don’t begrudge tado the extra margin and perhaps also the sales bonus in this case.
4 days later, the package was sent, together with an e-mail including an invoice with a payment deadline on the same day. Also nice. Wouldn’t be there yet, but please pay immediately. Calling the hotline is futile. But a big thank you to the social team of tado, who replied on twitter, because they solved the problem at short notice and competently. Of course, I have a 14-day payment deadline. I ignore the fact that the product arrived here only 4 days later. But interacting with the social team was my only good experience with tado until then. Even with later inquiries, the tado social media team always proved to be fast, honest and solution-oriented. Thanks again at this point!
Experiences with tado: The installation
The installation is very simple, and I agree with it to a large extent. Apple-like. So the setup also knew my constellation of iSense and Remeha Tzerra 28c. Why didn’t the arrogant guy from the hotline know that? It’s just a shame that this super simple installation leads you to assume that every step is really that easy. If everything seems to be made for stupid people, then you can’t believe it when it’s not like that. And then sometimes things get stuck.
For example, you should simply pull the blue paper strip out of the battery compartment when you turn the thermostat over. For me, it all looked very different. I didn’t see a blue stripe. Who would have thought that I would have to open the case first? I don’t think it was there anywhere. But at some point even I came up with it. But it doesn’t say anywhere how to open the case. Of course, you don’t want to destroy such an expensive new device right away.
Some points are also formulated so naturally that, for example, you actually get the idea to look in the box where the phase tester is. Because when people talk about “the phase tester”, then I assume that it is included, otherwise it would be called “a phase tester”. But it is not or it was missing from me (apparently it was only included in version 2?). You are also not informed anywhere before installation that you need it. It’s a pity, actually. In the middle of the installation you realize that you can cancel, because apparently the installation is otherwise life-threatening (I then solved this differently, because the iSense can only live without a battery if it gets power from the boiler, and with the fuse disconnected, the boiler could not pass on anything. But this is not a tip, please do not imitate it!). Or you thought, if you mention on the package that a phase tester is needed, then some people don’t buy the product because they don’t even know what a phase tester is. It’s better to only realize during the installation that you need one, because then you have already bought and are so far along with the installation that you will not send the device back. At 10 p.m., when I started the installation, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to get a phase tester. Apart from that, the “lying pen”, as it is also called, is not a sufficient tool. But that’s another topic.
After everything was reasonably attached (at 10:30 p.m. I was unfortunately still missing something in the wall to which I could have attached the Smart Thermostat, but gaffer tape is your friend), the positive surprise at first was that I had apparently actually managed not to have destroyed anything. The thermostat could actually control the boiler. Only the hot water was switched off. And there is another point of criticism: The hot water control is not really explained. And this drags on through all the help text, everything is just superficially treated. The help function is no help, because the content there is so general that you might as well do without it. During the installation, a yellow tab with a phone icon on the right side of the window can be seen all the time, but if you click on it, you won’t find any help texts that match the current state of the installation. Hardly any text has sufficient depth. This also runs through other areas of the tado world, see below.
Likewise, I don’t understand why I can’t say that the thermostat is now in the living room, where there are also two smart radiator thermostats? Wouldn’t it be great if they synchronized with each other? But now it just says “heating” and “living room”, and they show different temperatures (which is no wonder, because from the heaters at the window to the thermostat on the wall it is again three meters, and there is a loss of temperature). A call to tado, this time to a very helpful employee, brings the solution: He can summarize it, but it doesn’t really matter. The fact that the heating is set to 20°, the children’s room to 21° is also no problem, the heating thermostat is still allowed to request a higher temperature from the heating. Very nice. The hot water was not really explained. And while waiting in the hotline queue, I found the cover plate, which cannot be found in the shop (it can be found under this link here; the know-it-all salesman on my first phone call knew everything better, why hadn’t he recommended this plate right away?). By the way, in the video below you can see how it looks good.
Another point of criticism that I have made in my experiences with tado: The snapping of the radiator thermostats during installation only works suboptimally, with some thermostats I needed several attempts.
tado’s location-dependent control
In addition to the solution that tado offers us for our individual heating problem, I also found the location-dependent control system to be very ingenious from the very beginning. Instead of a strict schedule, the heating would now work when someone is really at home. Sounds good at first, doesn’t it?
The mobile phone or the tado app itself had problems locating me correctly from time to time, because even when I parked in a side street I was still outside the rings. Google Maps showed my correct location, in the settings of the tado app, the side street definitely belonged to the home zone. Only shortly before the front door did the background change from green to yellow. If I had taken the S-Bahn (in Hamburg the S-Bahn runs partly underground and the U-Bahn partly above ground), then I would have understood that. But I drove a DriveNow and was very curious to see when the system would switch. But as a rule, this feature works quite well.
Important: Some Android derivatives seem to activate a power saving mode that prohibits apps from querying the location in background mode. And so it can happen that you are not at home, but the tado app has not noticed it and the heating continues to work happily. So it’s worth taking a look at the app from time to time.
Can you really save money with tado?
I strongly doubt that the >30% savings in heating costs promised in the advertising at the time are really possible. However, the energy-saving guarantee did not refer to the 30%, but simply in case you “didn’t save enough”. I don’t see this offer anymore today. After a few weeks, I could say that the purchase would not pay for itself so quickly. We spend less than 750€ a year on gas, even if tado would save a third of that, then it would take more than 2 years to have the Smart Thermostat and the now 10 Smart Heater Thermostats out again. And this does not include the fact that some of the gas is used for hot water, and I won’t mess with that in the settings. I don’t want to be in the shower at 4 in the morning because I have an early plane, and then have to run to my cell phone again to turn on the hot water. Especially not as long as you are kept awake at night by two little new earthlings and then maybe need warm water to wash your hands after changing diapers (who would have thought that little boys would be so far… but let’s leave that). So I spent around 1,000€ on the smarthoming of our heating system, so I would need about 4 years until I am in the black with tado. I definitely haven’t achieved that after 4 years.
It is also interesting that the app already certified a saving of 11% for the first month of installation, November 2017. I had installed the Smart Thermostat and 4 radiator thermostats for two rooms on 27.11., so there were only 4 days and only part of the rooms in which the tado system was installed, and still you want to have saved 11%? I would be extremely surprised.
Let’s take a look at a monthly report for an entire month. In December 2017, I am said to have saved 22.8% of energy. That would be great, of course. Of course, tado does not know what energy I consumed in the previous month or in December 2016. It is simply estimated that I have saved so much energy compared to “consumption with a temperature- and time-controlled standard control with night reduction according to DIN V 18599-10”. It’s not as if there wasn’t a timetable before. The heating was already turned down during the day anyway, as well as at night. Does this comply with the DIN standard? I don’t know. But I suspect that the calculations here are very optimistic. After all, how much further can tado regulate down so that savings are actually made? To be honest, it’s even unlikely that I would have saved money here, but that’s not because of tado. Due to the offspring, we are more at home and have even heated a room more. In fact, because I can control the heating more precisely, I’m even more willing to turn the heating up when I’m cold. After all, I don’t have to get up for it anymore
In the meantime, however, you can also enter data, in our case the values from the gas meter. If you don’t, the estimates of the “Energy IQ” function look like this:
„
If you then enter data, the predictions are not immediately recalculated, apparently this takes place in the cloud. Here it took a day, and there you can see how far tado is from real consumption:
Anscheinend haben wir schon einiges gespart, aber dennoch nicht so viel wie tado vermutet hatte. Dennoch lohnt es sich, den Verbrauch manuell einzutragen.
Was auf jeden Fall nicht zuverlässig funktioniert, ist die automatische Erkennung, dass ein Fenster geöffnet wurde, so dass die Heizung ausgeschaltet wird. Manchmal funzt es, manchmal nicht, manchmal funktioniert es zuerst und dann schaltet sich die Heizung doch wieder ein. Und dann versucht sie natürlich gegen die Kälte anzuheizen, was natürlich komplette Geldverschwendung ist, im wahrsten Sinne Geld zum Fenster herauswerfen. Das ist natürlich schade, dass das nicht funktioniert.
What I also don’t quite understand is how tado and the heating curve of the thermal baths work together. The heating curve is a very special topic that you can talk about for hours with a heating technician. As far as I understand, the heating curve of a boiler is determined by an external sensor, so that the boiler achieves a flow temperature depending on it. So the boiler always runs a little to reach this flow temperature. At tado, it seems that the boiler is only started when heat is requested. But it’s not quite that simple. You can search in vain for the term on the tado page, and although there are interesting discussions about the heating curve, they are not shown in the search.
tado batteries empty after only 4 months
Yes, you read that right. After 4 months, I received a push notification as well as an e-mail from tado that the battery was empty in two thermostats. The remaining batteries ran out shortly afterwards. Quote from the email:
This is significantly earlier than the expected battery life. We are aware of the problem and are working on the solution. Your devices are updated to extend battery life. Please excuse the inconvenience.
Of course, this is extremely unpleasant. The question is, when will this be solved? Do I even notice when the thermostats are updated? By the way, it takes more than just a few minutes for the app to note that the battery has been changed; in one case, it took almost 30 minutes. In between, you get to know whether you have actually replaced the batteries with the right thermostat.
By the way, a dead battery can also be the reason why a room supposedly has no connection. The two rooms in the screenshot on the left both have 2 Smart Thermostats each, and one of them has a connection, the other doesn’t, apparently because the battery is dead. The app is not really helpful here at first, because the whole room is now no longer controllable. Premium is really something else, I’d say.
And after a year, the Smart Thermostat started to spin:
Sometimes something flashed only briefly when I pressed the button. The problem? Again a weak battery! These had just been replaced (and not with cheap batteries), but without warning the device no longer reacted properly. The flashing of the thermostats, which can be triggered via app, does not work at all in some rooms. Again a battery that is too weak!
Now, disposable batteries are not necessarily the best solution, rechargeable batteries are better from an environmental point of view. Not at tado. Because if you put batteries (HR6 instead of the recommended LR6) in it, then the display that the batteries are empty does not go away at all. This is because batteries simply have less spanning and tado apparently does not feel like adapting the software here. tado simply sits out the topic, as this Twitter thread shows.
Is it really that smart with tado control via the cloud?
A big point of criticism on my part: Why does everything have to be in the cloud? All settings are transferred to tado, and if your own Internet access fails, then intelligent heating is over. Yes, you can still adjust manually. Oh no, it doesn’t work, because if you have activated the parental control, then nothing works anymore. Bad luck. That doesn’t happen? Vodafone Kabel has failed here twice for several days in the last two months. In the middle of Hamburg.
And it doesn’t even have to be your own Internet access, because tado itself can also have problems with the server or the data center (yes, there are redudancies, but I know from my own experience that something like this always sounds good and can go wrong in an emergency). On the photo on the left you can see how it looks in the app when no connection is possible. Supposedly, in this case it was due to my internet connection, the cloud LED flashed on the Internet Bridge (the bridge tries to reach the tado servers). In fact, I was able to access the tado support pages via the same Internet connection, so it was probably less due to my Internet connection. According to the status page, the tado servers were running normally. Supposedly, the devices can then still be controlled manually in the event of an Internet failure. But the first week of my experience with tado was definitely rather mixed, because tado doesn’t seem to be honest about the availability of their servers.
Update 1673.2020: tado was offline for several hours on 1563.2020. Of course, there were more than 294 users who had problems, these are just the ones who had reported it. However, tado was transparent and admitted the problems on Twitter.
Will tado still exist in two years? I don’t know, I hope so, because otherwise I just spent a lot of money on unusable electronic waste. Synchronization is dependent on tado servers. My hope would then be that one of the established energy companies recognizes the opportunity and buys the innovation.
The main question for me is how long tado will continue to offer its cloud for free; at some point, it will probably be turned into a subscription service as well. Otherwise, I don’t understand the business model: How can you run a free sync server if you only have one-time income from the sale of the hardware? That makes no sense at all. I’m even afraid that tado is planning to add a subscription at some point, because if you have made the investment in the expensive thermostats for the first time, then €9.90 a month is not so bad anymore. Or? For this reason, I don’t recommend tado! Update February 2019: That’s exactly what happened. It costs only €2.99 a month, but it was foreseeable that a free cloud couldn’t work.
Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger, tado
In my opinion, tado users are lured to paid updates that don’t do them any good. For example, the paid upgrade of the tado app to version V3+ is recommended for just under 20€, but if you look very closely, this update doesn’t really help you in some cases. The support (the social media support, which I’m really excited about) has kindly admitted that. Of course, tado was also able to automatically detect when you leave the house and also when a window is open (well), only that such settings are now supposedly made automatically.
The indoor air comfort skill, on the other hand, sounds quite useful, but it doesn’t really bring you more information. I did the update anyway (just for this blog), but it was 20€, which I could have saved well. With IFTTT you can do more, because you even get warnings here.
Conclusion: Experiences with tado
The App
The app feels good. The knowledge that I can now really control the temperatures in every room is what I expect from today’s networked world, and tado has implemented this well. The V3+ version, on the other hand, I perceive as a bit of a money-making ploy.
Is it worth it?
At a price of 70-80€ per radiator thermostat, you think more carefully about whether you really equip all 12 radiators in the apartment with it. Then I’m at a price of over €1,000 in total, and then tado needs more than 4 years to recoup the money, as written above. By then, there will probably be better systems again. tado itself has already released version V3+. And even though all components look high-quality (my wife definitely thinks they are fancier than Max’s components!), they don’t necessarily feel more valuable. It feels more like cheap plastic.
Features
Mein Heizproblem wurde gelöst. Auch die ortsabhängige Steuerung funktioniert. Dass die Fenster-offen-Erkennung nicht zuverlässig ist, ist natürlich extrem schade.
Der Support
Dear tado management: Please inform your sales colleagues on the phone that you should not run over the mouth of customers if they have not even been able to pronounce half of the first sentence. This was hard to beat in terms of unfriendliness. And as I said: the help pages are really suboptimal. If tado didn’t just write marketing blah blah in the help part of the site, then they could possibly also relieve the support team. But so it’s no wonder that you have to call. The fact that the installation at a Remeha thermal spa works could have been written on the page. It would have saved me a pretty stupid phone call and tado a blog article that criticizes the friendliness of the tado employees. The help and sales texts are inaccurate, not in-depth enough and sometimes misleading.
Final Words
So my experiences with tado are generally rather mixed. My biggest criticisms are the dependence on the cloud, the poor communication (the social media team is an exception), the lack of reliability in recognizing an open window, the short battery run, and the sometimes unfriendly treatment on the phone. However, I don’t see any alternatives when I look at my experiences with Max! . But I wouldn’t buy tado again.
By the way, the phone number of the support hotline is 089 412 09569
Comments (since February 2020 the comment function has been removed from my blog):
I’m staying says
- October 2018 at 19:46 A very helpful experience report, thank you very much!
Marco says
- November 2018 at 04:44 Unfortunately, I should have read earlier….
Michael says
- December 2018 at 15:45 Oh man, thank you so much for your article. I also wanted to press the order button – but now?? Sorry that you rode ahead as a beta tester. In any case, I have the feeling that the great smart home world is only beautiful in the commercials. The real -smart- life seems to me to be more of an obstacle course. X standards (WLAN, Buetooth, Dect). Nope, I’ll let some more time go by….. As long as I still have two healthy hands, I can still operate the heating controller by hand.
Claus says
- December 2018 at 13:38 Hello Tom, I have similar problems, with my heating situation and the tado sales, with me by mail. They don’t answer my questions, and always only answer the question of whether you have a room thermostat. In my particular case, this is built into the thermal baths themselves – a special feature of Vaillant thermal baths with an exterior door guide. Apparently an overwhelm. After your great report, I decided against it shortly before buying. Thank you!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!!! To you and your family, a nice warm Christmas and a happy new year.
Thomas says
- January 2019 at 17:46 Thanks for the review. Unfortunately, I also read it too late. For me, the extension kit prevents me from setting a comfort calorific value of >18 degrees at the boiler. It’s a bit cold in winter… Unfortunately, the support is neither accommodating nor helpful…
Herbert says
- January 2019 at 00:33 Thanks for the detailed information. I have also been using 5 radiators and a room thermostat for more than a year. My problem is also the battery life!! every 3 weeks I change brand batteries at the room thermostat !! Without this, the heating system is in place!! I’m thinking about whether I won’t convert the power supply!
Julio Caballero says
- March 2019 at 12:13 Thanks for this info. Too late for me unfortunately I recognized the problem even with the window open, I think I’ll send the whole thing back again. You can forget about support.
Herbert says
- June 2019 at 06:50 Battery life
After several mails, I got a replacement thermostat free of charge – since then the system has been working again without any problems.
When I asked about the error, I didn’t get any information.
Basically, I am satisfied with the way the Tado system works! But the support is in need of improvement!
Michael says
- September 2019 at 10:06 Times without any additional devices The iSense has built in a function especially for this case: “4.2.3. Function External heat If the temperature in the room where the controller is positioned reaches the desired value, the central heating switches off. This can happen if there is an open fireplace. or many people are present. In such a situation, the other rooms in the house are also no longer heated. You can turn on the external heat function to ensure that other rooms continue to be heated. This is done via the Program button. The room temperature sensor integrated in the controller is switched off. The water temperature in the central heating system at that time is then maintained. If it gets too cold or too warm in the other rooms, you can raise or lower the room temperature there by pressing the C button on the controller. This causes the water temperature in the heating system to increase or decrease.In order to further regulate the room temperature in the other rooms individually, you can equip the radiators with thermostatic valves.”
Tom Alby says
- September 2019 at 20:25 Wow. All I can say is: RTFM, and thoroughly. I had read it, but apparently not thoroughly enough. I would have saved a lot of money and trouble. The only advantage of tado is that the temperature is at least kept exactly. And that when you’re not at home, you don’t have to think about anything. Thanks for the comment!
Dustin says
- September 2019 at 13:13 I can only confirm your experiences in a similar way! The support doesn’t deserve the name. In my case, the bridge loses the connection to the cloud every day, which in turn means that the radiators can no longer be controlled via app, do not recognize an open window and do not notice when they should control up and down. The problem has existed since April 2019, I have now exchanged no less than 77 e-mails with Tado support, made several phone calls…. I document everything now because it seems so unbelievable…. Now, in mid-September, I need the system again and inevitably have to replace the thermostats soon, because I can’t heat properly like this. Instead of saving money, it tends to become more expensive. tado just hasn’t answered at all for 3 weeks now…. All my mails are disregarded. Previously, I was confirmed several times in writing that the problem was not related to my network and that similar errors were currently being investigated, so more time was needed…. as I said, since April it has been going like this…..tado…. please keep your hands off this system. It won’t be fun in the long run and the batteries in the thermostats have to be replaced every 6 months, you will be informed by mail (the mail text is the same every year….you apologize and want to extend the battery life by updating the system soon…)….but there doesn’t seem to be a solution for this either. The support pages on the Internet (please test the FAQ ́s before buying, you will notice it quickly yourself) could not be worse formulated…. You can’t get any help there
Guido Sommer says
- October 2019 at 07:40 Hello Tom, I would have found your article in advance .-( I bought 18 thermostats – unfortunately our house built in 1930 is probably so well insulated that the bridge can serve a maximum of 2 floors! Do you have a tip which thermostats (which are controlled via WLAN) are good?
Thanks from Stuttgart Guido Sommer
Tom Alby says
- October 2019 at 08:49 No, apart from the thermostats mentioned I have not tried anything.
Andreas Schorre says
- October 2019 at 08:19 Hello, I have now two weeks the Tado system V3+, but only for central heating (5 thermostats + bridge) in an old apartment. For me, everything runs as it should, the “window open detection” works without problems, starts immediately and interrupts the heating process. Geofencing also detects my location (iPhone) exactly and starts heating, as it should be. I can’t understand the many points of criticism, at least for me, and hope it stays that way in the future! Of course, I can’t give an estimate of the battery life after two weeks, maybe the V3+ version of the software really has an extension of the battery life, it would be desirable. Although I will probably rely on rechargeable batteries, you can get them quite cheaply from brand manufacturers today and you only have the purchase costs once.
The “window open detection” and “geofencing” are only available in the premium version, otherwise you “only” receive a message and have to turn down the temperature alone, which should be enough for many users (who only hold the mobile phone in their hands anyway…). For my part, I got the annual subscription for 25 euros, because I find this automatic recognition very helpful and the price is also completely ok! (I work in IT and therefore probably see it with different eyes and experience) Unfortunately, many people with today’s stinginess-is-cool mentality don’t see it that way, seen in many chat comments…
I don’t want to praise Tado too early, but I also don’t want to declare every little thing to be a Tado problem. I noticed myself how I had to readjust several times in the old building (3.50 meters ceiling height) with the temperature correction in order to reach the really displayed temperature in the whole room….but it works! Once everything is well adjusted and you have exactly the result you wanted.
So if I don’t have any hardware failures or software problems now, then I’m actually very satisfied with Tado.
Tom Alby says
- October 2019 at 09:15 Buying as early as I do has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, you still have to struggle with the teething troubles, on the other hand, there was no subscription model at that time, so I don’t pay anything per month for the premium feature you mentioned. I only paid for the new app. I thought that was fair. Tado probably did not dare to introduce the subscription to the first customers retrospectively.
Regarding the batteries: This is definitely better from an environmental point of view and will also be noticeable in the wallet in the medium term. However, even with the best batteries, I have not achieved the times that I achieve with a normal battery. But of course, environmental protection takes precedence over comfort.
Achim Sökefeld says
- December 2019 at 22:00 I am an architect and after a year and a half of using Tado, I deeply regret it. I saved 50 € in a year for a 100 m² apartment, constantly changed the batteries and constantly had the feeling that my apartment was too cold. A thermostat broke because a little thing fell on it. After an iPhone change, the old iPhone cannot be deleted, the app crashes constantly, data is wrong, for example, I am said to have opened the window 316 times in November. Nonsense, simply unrealistic. I don’t replace the thermostats just for the sake of appearance, but I think I only use them for manual control like my thermostats before.
Simon says
- December 2019 at 23:02 Good evening! I have installed 13 Tado thermostats in my physiotherapy practice for a few days now. Of course, I don’t use the away function, because otherwise my employees plus patients would freeze to death while I’m on home visits. Despite all the initial skepticism, I have to say that it works quite well and I am quite satisfied at the moment. 250 m2 are well covered without radio interruptions. Impresses me. That’s how it should be. The support of Tado, however, can indeed be completely forgotten. I wanted to have a few questions answered before investing in the thermostats. Unfortunately, this is only possible via email, FAQ’s or chat (according to the lady from the chat). Email just takes me time to deal with it for days. I don’t sit at the computer all day and type. The same applies to the chat function. At first, a bot responds and after a short time at least a real person. But still, I don’t have the time to chat back and forth like with a friend. I want to get the questions answered quickly for me in order to decide for or against this system and to be able to continue searching. This could be clarified in a much more time-saving phone call. Tado has slackened off in this respect, as there was probably still a telephone service until recently. What a pity. But I found another company that sells these thermostats and could be reached by phone and could help. So much for my experiences so far.
Marco says
- December 2019 at 11:01 Lots of negatives. Have you thought about what it would be or is like if you had/have a “traditional” room thermostat? Similar problems? Then all this is not a Tado problem… I am happy with the ability to check and control the room temperature via mobile phone. I don’t need a home/away functionality in my single-family home with several people. (I was not paid or commissioned by Tado. But aren’t some of the negative comments above from the competition? Some “influencers”, perhaps?)
Tom Alby says
- December 2019 at 12:22 Sorry, but your comment gives me a stomachache. Have you read my article at all? Then you wouldn’t write some things like that. And I don’t believe in the influencers. At least other users have given real names here and you haven’t.