XFINITY xFi saved me money even when I wasn’t home

XFINITY xFi app Restart Gateway

Not too long ago I wrote about the XFINITY xFi system and how I love the family control it has given me over the wired and wireless devices connected to my home network. Since that writing, I’ve experienced first-hand yet another benefit of the xFi system.

While away from my house for the weekend, I routinely checked in on my Nest thermostat back home to make sure it was still in Away Mode like it was supposed to be. To my displeasure, I discovered that due to a power outage, my Nest thermostat had rebooted and thus was no longer in Away Mode. This means it was aggressively cooling the house back down to its normal temperature even though I wasn’t home.

XFINITY xFi “Restart Gateway” to the rescue

I attempted to manually fix the problem only to discover that my Nest thermostat wasn’t responding to any remote changes I was making on my phone. Usually, when something like this happens after a power outage and I’m home, I will reboot my XFINITY gateway just to see if that magically fixes the problem. But I wasn’t home so I couldn’t reboot the gateway.

That’s when I remembered that xFi allows you to use the XFINITY xFi app to restart your gateway, even remotely. I fired up the app and touched the button to restart the gateway.

A few minutes later, I re-opened the Nest app and noticed I had full control of my Nest thermostat again. I was able to manually put the thermostat back in Away Mode and save myself a lot of money by not unnecessarily cooling my house while I’m not there.

While this post is not sponsored, I am periodically compensated by XFINITY to review products and services.