I’ve never seen a program where the lockout can’t be overridden, like someone said in the article-generally the consequences are that overriding the lockout more than a couple times a year loses your incentives.

A cynic might say that the feature to “really lock you out” was always there/planned. Either way, damn the developers who built it, probably sitting in an air conditioned (or heated) room and thinking it could never happen to them. Or that they knew better than the stupid consumers, “who would just be uncomfortable for a bit”.

Not that the incentives are usually worth that much, either. If people rely on stable temperature at home for anything living and not-human, too, it’s really not worth participating.