A few months ago, I purchased a new Acutemp (WS355CA) indoor-outdoor thermometer from Canadian Tire. After a couple of months, I finally hung the sensor outside and set it up. It turns out that the Acutemp thermometer isn’t “accu(rate) at all!
I can understand that the outside temp might be out a little because of the sun hitting the sensor (it shouldn’t). But when the inside temp was barely within three degrees, that’s a problem. Three degrees is pretty huge for inaccuracy in the house!
What nobody knows (Canadian Tire does) is that the no-service centre for Acutemp is a third party that’s contracted to them, as well as bunch of other manufacturers by the name of Springfield Instruments. I tried for an hour to find the direct contact information for Acutemp without luck.
Do you remember the old days of mail-in rebates? Vast numbers of times they were rejected for the most bogus reasons. Springfield gave me the same run-around. They did “open a file” – that’s the way most of these places get paid in having a verifiable warranty claim submitted. In the same short email came the “not warranty” rejection. So a win-win for them: Getting paid by Acutemp for a “file” while rejecting the claim out of hand – a win for the manufacturer (and often a bonus for the call center – but I have no way of knowing that in this case.
“The weather stations are set to read an accurate temperature.” Oh, really? THREE DEGREES OUT is not accurate! “A small tolerance allows for small fluctuations that do not affect the overall accuracy.” Oh, really? “The accuracy cannot be determined by comparing your unit to another weather station.” Oh, really? That does not even make sense. Trust us, it’s accurate? Just ignore that every other thermometer is giving a different temp… So I put the unit on top of my toaster. While I’m not a toaster expert, bread becomes toast through heat! Nope…the temp on the thermometer didn’t move up. Their response: We tried it with “your unit” and it did rise. “My unit” is in my house. You mean you took one out of the box and tested it. In other words, there’s no chance mine (in my house) could be defective. Claim denied.
Unfortunately, I was now beyond the 90-day refund time with Canadian Tire. But I certainly wasn’t going to go away. So off to Canadian Tire’s customer service. Hurray and thank you to “Jhove” who barely wanted to know the defect issues and immediately gave me a refund. “We don’t carry that model anymore.” Now could you go the next step and NOT carry any Acutemp thermometers? Your buyers know it’s a third-party not-much-hope customer no-service centre. But I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth in getting my refund and learning the big lesson of avoiding Acutemp products at all cost. I know the slang name for Canadian Tire is “Crappy Tire” but that sure wasn’t the case for my issue!