That is the male side of a bullet connector. You need to either get the corresponding female connector and crimp it on the other wire, then plug them in, or cut it off and use a butt splice to join the two wires.

My favorite to hold you over until you find it.

Yes, but if your caregiver gets sick, either they have to find coverage while they are sick, or you do on short notice.

With a company, they can reassign someone to fill in with little disruption (theoretically). The reality is, they are struggling with hiring and keeping people for all of the reasons listed in this thread, so even if you hire a company, maybe you will get someone to cover for your regular, or maybe you won’t.

I learned my lesson about ‘lifetime’ updates with a Tom Tom GPS unit, from the late '90s, maybe early 2000s. After about 4 or 5 years I couldn’t install the latest map updates, so I contacted CS. They said, “Oh yeah, lifetime means the time of the expected life of the unit, which is 4.5 years. We don’t support that model anymore. Any other questions?”