I signed up with Grand Alarms close to a year ago. Upon starting the installation process, my wife and I knew we should have started backing out of using this company. Alas, we gave this company the benefit of the doubt and we're now locked into three (3) years with them. Here's our beef:
1. Installation - the sales representative (Bav) made this process seem like a breeze. I'm sure it would have been had the technician (George) known what he was doing. He arrived on day 1, discovered he didn't have everything he needed, so we had to reschedule. He came back a couple of days later. Again, he had some equipment issues, so he returned on a third occasion. OK - benefit of the doubt. Upon having the system installed in our new home, it took close to another four days to have an incessant beeping stopped, after the actual installation was made, because there was something being incorrectly formatted in the programming. On each day, some excuse or another was given and a return date established. Once it seemed to work, we thought that was the end of it - we could finally "arm" the house. Wishful thinking: the programming was still incorrectly formatted, so it took ten days and multiple rescheduled appointments, for the system to work properly. True - it finally worked, but it doesn't give a customer much confidence.
2. Customer Service - I'm sorry to say that it is erratic and, often, deplorable. Why is a customer made to feel intellectually inadequate when the service provider is at fault? Worse, why is the customer being blamed for a service provider's inefficiencies and lack of attention to detail? Having read our instruction manuals thoroughly, and understanding perfectly that our system wasn't working properly, I couldn't believe that I was on the phone with someone trying to convince me that the system was in fact working when they had just tested it remotely and discovered it wasn't!
3. Culminating Frustration - My wife and I just returned from a trip abroad. We left our house in the care of a friend who is on Grand Alarms contact list should we be unavailable in any eventuality. That eventuality arrived in the form of a depleted battery. Our friend kindly called Grand Alarms on our behalf to understand the problem and to figure out if she could fix it herself. She could have, but Grand Alarms wouldn't give her the instructions because they needed to run a diagnostic on the house - something they would only do if the owners were at home. The principle seems to defy the logic of having an emergency contact list, but again, we've opted for the benefit of doubt. So we called Grand Alarms from overseas ourselves. On New Year's day, we couldn't reach anybody. Not a soul was available the day after either. We understand that it was the holiday season, but what happens when break-ins occur on holidays? What happens when your secured domicile is intruded when Grand Alarms is on vacation? Well, the monitoring station was on duty. Were they of any help? Not really - [paraphrasing] "uhm, all I can tell you, sir, is that your battery's low. You should fix it as soon as possible. I can't tell you which one, though, or how to fix it, but I can give you a number for service." Service, of course, was on vacation.
Upon returning to our home, We called Grand Alarms to fix this battery issue. Melinda assured us we'd hear from a technician within the hour.
It's been four.
That's what $200 for installation and $140 every quarter gets you at Grand Alarms.
