An appropriate forum for my question may not exist.

[Susan Calvin]

This looks like it's more for minor repairs and cleaning and stuff, but it's the closest I could find so I'm going to ask

My Amana heat pump system that I got during the pandemic because it was basically the only thing I could get for a reasonable price has always been fine except for not heating well when the temperature gets low. It has an auxiliary radiant heat panel, but I've always been convinced it didn't work, or didn't work right.

I've been just putting up with it but I recently called a technician out to look at it, which was an interesting experience in itself as people don't seem to want to work on Amana units, or heat pumps at all. But I finally found someone.

He wasn't very good at explaining things, whether on purpose or not, so in frustration after he had messed with it a while I bought a thermostat that allowed me to turn the heat panel on manually, which my current thermostat does not. It was a Honeywell that both Amazon and Lowe's carry and that was listed as compatible with heat pumps with auxiliary heat panels. Oh, and with two stage units, which mine is.

Well, he said that one would not work with my system. He said I had to have one that cost $650 plus installation, but he did a lousy job of explaining why the one I bought wouldn't work and exactly how the one he proposed to sell me functioned so that I could determine if it would do what I wanted. He didn't even so much as show me a picture of it.

So I'm hoping somebody here might know enough about heat pumps to help me, or possibly someone here has an Amana unit and can tell me if they've used just a regular heat pump thermostat purchased from Lowe's or Amazon. I really don't understand why my unit should require a special thermostat, and, as I said, the one guy I found so far that would even work on it is no good at explaining.

TIA