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@jrconlin no, honestly it's funny to me that you think this is good?
Hold should be a single thing that works a single way. You turn on hold and now it is a dumb thermostat until you turn hold off.
This scheme is needlessly complicated and opaque.
Honestly, nest had it right in that a temporary override would always stay until the next schedule point. The way ecobee is doing it is maddening. I'd like to see a combination of nest's temporary override and permanent hold. That seems obvious.
Das Ganon 
@TechConnectify My house has a schedule thermostat (with weekdays, Saturday and Sunday for different settings) and the temporary hold until next schedule point is exactly how that works too. I have no idea why you wouldn't do it that way.
And it's not *that* complex a thermostat.
Since I was in Italy at the beginning of October (and snow was on the horizon) I asked my grandparents to turn the furnace on and they were unsure on what the switch to do that was.
So ecobee sounds nuts
@DasGanon yeah, it's ridiculous. Nest behaves like you would expect any programmable thermostat to behave when you change the temperature: it will stay what you set it to until the next program point. But for some ridiculous reason, you cannot simply have it hold and become a dumb thermostat. Ever.
Ecobee, on the other hand, decided to give you way too much control over what it does with temporary overrides. But at least you can hold.
The best answer is exactly between the two.
@DasGanon like, I honestly cannot fathom why anyone would value "a two-hour hold" or whatever the hell Ecobee lets you do.
Presumably, you want it to follow the program you set up until you don't. So you make a change. But you want it to resume the program once that change has been over. But if you don't, then you put on hold mode.
I do not understand why ecobee has the granularity it does, and I do not understand why nest refuses to let you just turn it into a dumb thermostat when you want.
@TechConnectify yeah. Really I want my current one but with 1. The ability to look at weather and climate and go "hmm looks like it's going to be cold or hot, I'm going to fan or heat" and 2. "You know it looks like you're not in and we can make your house more efficient for heating/cooling"
I guess I can see the point of duration holds, like if I'm home for a bit, or whatever but like really the best option is a way to release when I'm wanting to leave, not set a timer
@DasGanon Right! And it is utterly maddening in my case that nest, on the newer thermostats, does not save separate schedules for heating and cooling.
My heat source is gas. Time of use savings are not a thing, so my program is a simple reduction in temperature overnight.
But when I'm using cooling? I want it to crank down low at night when power is cheap. Then I want it to be practically off during the day.
The old system let me keep two programs. Now I have to change it spring and fall.
@TechConnectify and the worst part is I could see that as a really simple option. Like say you set it to 60 overnight which uses less gas in winter but then in summer that just gets it frosty with AC.
And all it does is require the unit to look and go "should I heat or cool?" based on the outside temperature. And the schedule shouldn't need to wildly change for most people since they'll want it to be cheap when they're out and comfy when they're in.
@DasGanon I think this is what they were trying to do with the update. Because now you set comfort preferences or something, and you can define a heating and cooling set point. Then the schedule just changes between those presets.
But in my case, what I'm trying to do between summer and fall are just too different for that scheme to work. Plus, the heating and cooling set points can't overlap which requires changing presets, too.
@DasGanon in my heart of hearts, I think they're trying to make it so that you don't have to think as hard.
And I think that would be okay if it weren't for the fact that they removed the granularity that someone who /wants/ to think about it used to have.
Maybe 80 to 90% of people prefer the new way, but it is absolutely infuriating to me and I don't think the old system was difficult to understand at all.
@TechConnectify Yeah I get it but like it sounds like (at least with your anecdote) that it's now way harder for those who do want that granularity.
Maybe there's a security update or something involved but it's annoying that you can't just say "simple vs complex scheduling" and regain those features.
@TechConnectify @DasGanon For me, the 2-hr hold is useful for when it’s just a little cold / hot. My house is well insulated, though, and can maintain the inside temperature fairly easily.
Coupled with the lack of true winter, I think it is useful the way it’s designed, but will admit it is opaque.
@jdechko @TechConnectify and that makes sense. I will turn on hold if I'm working from home for example.
But like part of the "it's not really winter so I don't want to kick the furnace on" is really the time we should be using a heat pump and not having to worry about the thermostat in the first place
@jdechko @DasGanon I can't help myself from pointing out, though, that if your home is well-insulated, then it's not like it's going to run much after that two-hour duration once it's attained the setpoint you asked. I think just letting it resume the program at the next change is fine, plus - you could also just set it back down later.
Deciding a "default" behavior - or picking which one every time you do an override - feels like, well, too many options to me.
@TechConnectify That’s an excellent point that I was thinking about when reading @DasGanon ‘s reply.
At this point, it’s probably been more about continuing to do things the way I’ve been used to it without considering why.
In reality, I should review the schedule and confirm that what I set up ~3 years ago is still something that works.
@TechConnectify @jdechko @DasGanon Isn’t having a sensible* default but providing options for those that want something different a pretty good way to satisfy a broad audience of users?
*I acknowledge that “sensible” is doing a lot of work there.
@admanC @TechConnectify @jdechko while I would normally agree that this is "keyboard heating" behavior, this 1. Was the original default and 2. Wasn't that unreasonable a setup until this new version, according to Alec.
@admanC @jdechko @DasGanon Yes, but honestly my big concern here is that ecobee conflates overrides with holding.
I agree there should be an option for what you want it to do when you make an override to the program. But there also needs to be an option to **turn the program off** and make it be dumb.
That is technically accomplished with how ecobee has things arranged, but it is very confusing.
@TechConnectify @DasGanon after reading a lot of the discussion I have a theory on this: someone at Ecobee noticed many users didn't understand why they'd change the set point and then the program would "randomly" resume and didn't understand what Hold meant, so they came up with a way to make the behavior "more clear". And slightly missed the mark while also making the UI incredibly cumbersome...this is a why theory not suggesting it's good.