customer

Dear C4 User and all, Thank you for your answer and all the other answers. There are two points in your last post that really caught my attention, in my layman's understanding: 1: mismatch of hardware 2: I can go years without needing to call my dealer = that's my dream come true As our dealer is coming back tomorrow to continue with their KNX work, I will show them the post in this forum and I am curious to see what they have to say. It is always beneficial to get a second opinion. I will also try to get answers to some of your technical questions - once I have posted them, I will appreciate in case you answer; I will understand if you do not. Every little helps & life is a learning curve. Thank you again for all your inputs.

Not getting political at all. My apologies if you had that feeling. It was just a simple linguistic comparison. I am a very apolitical person and I really don't know much about the US politics as I am in Europe. I assume you are right on the point where C4 cannot oversee every dealer. I don't think we have any Customer Advocacy Group as you do in the USA. I am looking for help here, not more critisism. Thank you.

There is never guarantee; not even with your president. I am not sure about comparing an electrician, plumber or a car mechanic to someone certified by one of the most prominent companies in this field. And did we get any referrals whether they had done houses of our size before, yes we did. That's why I am trying to figure out what went so wrong in our place. And that's why I appreciate every input/brainstorming. I want to make sure that by putting KNX in, the history will not repeat itself. Interesting, but nobody commented on my explanation of the lights yet. Does that make any sense to you? Thank you!

BTW - I love the 'Czechnology' :0))))

I will find out and let you know. Just to add, the company we picked is certified and authorized by C4 Company. Plus they put their system in hundreds of flats in residential projects every year. Then what is the C4's system of checks and balances to make sure that their official dealers will not do a sloppy job? Where is my guarantee that the next ‘authorized’ dealer I pick is not going to be even worse? Still, I find the premise of being so dependent on a company to run your place just nonsensical. In the past, people lived in big houses and were ok without any smart households. I just think this was a wrong choice for us.

Dear all, Thank you for all your super quick responses; I really appreciate them. It seems like they all point to the company being not very competent. As I said before, I am just a simple user so in order to answer some of your technical questions I had to ask my husband and the company. Well, as to the lights, here is the first answer I got, excuse me being not technically precise if that is the case: The lighting control in the house was BTicino My home. The BTicino My home drivers wound not turn on certain light (which we picked after the system was installed). I order to drive these lights we used DALI driver, which was run through WAGO. What I understand that these two stopped somehow working when C4 restarted. They say KNX will drive the lights directly. I am expecting the answers on the pool controller, video doorbell from our technicians. And we are based in the Czech Republic. Many thanks!

Dear all, Allow me to briefly introduce myself /ourselves as victims of this system. I am just a simple user so excuse me if I do not use the right terminology to describe the 7-year struggle/journey we have had so far with this system in our house. I hope you will still get the message though. As we live in a 4 storey house where there are about 20 rooms, pool, garden, floor heating etc. we though having a so called smart home might help us to have things under control and run everything smoothly. Unfortunately, the opposite is truth. Issues started from the very beginning. Being aware of the size of the house and being told we are putting in the best of the best, we were very patient for 3 years. However, no change after 3 years; one thing fixed, the other went wrong. Never-ending story. So, the company appointed a technician, who was coming once a week for a whole day to monitor all the actions of the system trying to find out where the problem lies. In vain. Our present reality: There are 7 TVs in this house. Once the technician comes and restarts things, he has to go to every single room to make sure that every single TV is working = complete violation of privacy. There are speakers in most rooms – ditto. The same applies to heating and cooling. We also had a 2-day audit with the C4 Technical Support Manager in our house and they did not really figure out what was wrong. AC units – every single season they either: do not work, we cannot not switch them off or they live their own existence i.e. going on/off as they wish and your simple remote control will not help you as the C4 system overrides them. The pool temperature control got stuck and our pool was heated to 40 degrees twice! The Video door bell has been fixed and restarted about 20 times – not kidding – counted the emails I sent to the company. Because we had continuous problems with lighting, the company now suggested putting the KNX system in and they are working on it. 5 weeks of people in the house to get this done!!! I must say that the reviews are very positive but again, now instead of having two technicians, one in charge of AV/TV and the other one of the Heating system, in addition, I have the third one in charge of KNX. So now I actually have three hotlines instead of two. So if you want to spend your life living with the following, have C4 installed: - A dealer having approximately 90% (at least in our case) control of your house – you are dependent on them and stuck with them for life - Ordinary technician/electricians cannot do it - You need a ‘specialist’ to program/fix/check/redo things and it costs you - Your own total lack of control of your own place - Not being able to make even basic changes to lighting, heating, temperature, AV/TV in the system etc. - Constant updates - Regularly people coming over going up and down through your place to check if things are working once they have been fixed or restarted - You can cancel the dealer’s permission for a remote access to your place but you will have to let them in again if something goes wrong or otherwise they have to come in person = Catch 22 - If you saw our rack, it looks like the one in a tube station, you cannot just restart your switches if anything gets stuck, there are so many of them that you just don’t know - Truth be told, the only things that do not really act up are the irrigation system, cameras and alarm but do you really need one of the most expensive ‘smart’ systems to run these? Sincerely, 2 of my friends are building their new houses so I gave them a friendly warning not to have this thing installed. I also spoke to our architect, showed him around explaining things and he admitted we are not the first one of his customers experiencing such issues. 2 more neighbours in our street have the same issues and they have completely different companies running it for them So basically after 7 years of on&off struggles, I must say I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope things will improve a bit with KNX but the worst part of our reality is, that you cannot get rid of this thing. As it has already been mentioned on this forum, we would have to rewire/rebuild the whole house. Honestly, after all this time I must say there is nothing you can say to persuade me that this system is normal and user friendly. I do not call it smart, I call it retarded. To conclude, I only wish I had Harry Potter’s magic wand so that I could make it vanish from our house. Regards, A super desperate user.