Resolved: Hunter Douglas - Endless Frustrations Make Nice Blinds a Huge Disappointment

I had 4 Hunter Douglas motorized blinds installed in December of 2016. They are really nice shades, and they are effective in insulating against heat and cold.

But I have never, ever been able to just enjoy having them, because they malfunction nearly every day. They are programmed to open at a certain time in the morning and to come down at a certain time of the night. Though they almost always close properly at night, they only rarely open as they are supposed to in the morning.

I've had a technician come out a number of times, and everything seems to work by the time he leaves. But of course, it's impossible to test how they will open or close at a certain time until that certain time actually happens.

H-D even provided a replacement hub, but nothing improved.

Now, one and a half years after installation, one of the shades has stopped working altogether, and nothing I can do will get it to work again. On the PowerView app, it shows that this shade's batteries (which I replaced twice in a row) are full, but they show as gray instead of green, as does the signal strength. I have scoured the manuals and find nothing that addresses the issue of gray-not-green battery and signal strength. So what am I supposed to do?

And the control panel on the wall that allows me to manually raise and lower the shades has now started to malfunction, too. I press Shade 2, and Shade 1 responds. Shade 4 went up a few inches, then down a few inches, then up a few inches again (this from pressing the button to make it open all of the way).

I am guessing that the control panel's batteries need to be replaced. So I got new batteries for it, took out the old ones, and tried putting the new ones in. The manual says to make sure they fit snugly, but there is no way to do that; nothing I do will make them stay in their slots--they just pop right out.

It shouldn't be this hard. One should not need a PhD in H-D shades in order to make them work, and one should not be required to have an expensive repair person come and fix them all the time, either.

All I want is for them to work as they are supposed to, to go up when I have programmed them to do it and to go down when I have them programmed to do that. I kept a log of all of the days when they did not act as they were supposed to, and it was many more days than the number when they actually worked as programmed.

The shades are nice, but they are simply not worth the frustration level that I have experienced. And I didn't even mention that they are expensive. Shouldn't they work if you pay a lot of money for them?

At the moment, I kind of hate Hunter Douglas.