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Nest Labs Halts Alarm Sales

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Nest released a consumer safety notice for its new Nest Protect and halted sales. The smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) alarm has a feature called Nest Wave that enables users to turn off the alarm with the wave of a hand. The company identified during its own research and testing that a unique combination of circumstances caused Nest to question could be unintentionally activated.

"This could delay an alarm going off if there was a real fire," said Tony Fadell, CEO, Nest Labs, in an online company statement. "We identified this problem ourselves and are not aware of any customers who have experienced this, but the fact that it could even potentially happen is extremely important to me and I want to address it immediately."

The company advised that those using Nest Protect should disable the Nest Wave feature. According to Nest, this will immediately resolve the issue and remove safety concerns.

"We're enormously sorry for the inconvenience caused by this issue," said Fadell's statement. "Please know that the entire Nest team and I are focused on fixing this problem and continuing to improve our current products in every way possible. If you don’t want to keep your Nest Protect smoke alarm, we will give you a complete refund."

The company is working towards a solution for this product feature and will update the software, turn the feature back on, and begin selling the product again, once a tested and approved solution is available.

"This will only happen after extensive testing and once we have received approval from safety agencies in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom," said Fadell. "We expect this to take at least two or three months and we’ll continue to update you as we have more information."

Below are instructions provided by Nest Labs.

If you have a Nest Protect connected to a Nest Account via Wi-Fi:
Within 24 hours, Nest Wave will be automatically disabled. You don’t need to do anything and even with this feature disabled, our smoke alarm will continue to work very effectively, monitoring for increased levels of smoke and CO in the home.

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If you have a Nest Protect that is not connected to a Nest Account, or have since taken it offline:
It’s very important that you immediately connect your Nest Protect to your Nest Account so we can remotely disable Nest Wave. Here are detailed instructions on how to connect your Nest Protect to the Nest Account quickly and easily. Our Customer Support team can also help you.

If you have a Nest Protect that is not connected to a Nest Account and do not have access to Wi-Fi:
If you are unable to immediately connect to a Nest Account, please discontinue use of your Nest Protect and we will give you a complete refund. To claim your refund, visit nest.com/contact/refund.

If you want to buy a Nest Protect:
Nest Wave is on by default in every alarm we sell. To ensure no one buys an alarm that needs an immediate update, we’ve decided to stop all sales while we fix this issue.