Jeanne G.
Great security *if* you never experience bad weather in your area!
Earlier today I received the 2nd call in the past 10 days from your company indicating there was a lost communication signal from my home alarm to your monitoring service. The 1st call was back on Thursday, 9/12. At which time I had scheduled the next available appointment for a tech to come out which was on Tuesday 9/17, meaning my home would be unmonitored and vunerable for a minimum of 5 days for service I was still paying for that I could not use due to your equipment failure. Luckily, the system was able to restore itself by mid day on Friday 9/13 and I was able to call and do a test and was told the signal was able to be read at your monitoring facility and cancelled my technician appointment. Then today 9/21, I was called again indicating that there was again a lost communication signal from my residence. This time, the signal was only reported in your system, as my control panel was not indicating that there was a signal loss. When I called customer service back around 1:30pm, I was told this was most likely due to a signal loss in the cell towers and that they may be down for maintenance due to the bad weather our area was experiencing within the last 24hrs. The tech advised that we try doing an "emergency test" which we did and they were unable to read the signal and advised me that this was an issue that a few customers in my area have had and they seemed to resolve themselves within a few hours and she suggested that I call back in a couple hours to do another signal test. I explained that the control panel didn't indicate a loss of communication. She stated this could be because my system is communicating with the cell tower, but that the cell tower isn't able to communicate with your office. Um, ok! So I called back at 4:30pm and spoke with another technician. She also indicated that she still could not locate a signal from my residence at this time either. We again did another "emergency test" in which this test was also unable to be read as well. She too indicated the whole cell tower issue. She said that she would arrange for a technician to come out. The earliest appointment would be on Friday 9/27. So in other words, My $70/mo that I'm paying for monitoring is good enough to be with out monitoring for FIVE full days until your company can get a technician to evaluate my issue and fix or replace YOUR EQUIPMENT! I feel like this is unacceptable that I'm just supposed to be ok with this. The whole reason behind paying the $70/mo for a MONITORED alarm system is to have the monitoring and for it to instill some level of peace of mind in knowing that if a break-in does happen, the police will be notified. What good is the alarm if nobody's going to come if a break-in does happen? I fully understand that an alarm does not stop the chance of being a burglary statistic, but it does give me relief to leave my home knowing that it's being "looked after" or so I thought it would be when I was recommended to your company for my home security needs. I have only been a customer since February of 2013. In those 7 months, I've experienced at least 2 instances in which at least one of my multiple cameras was offline and required being rebooted and now i'm having this latest issue. Needless to say, I'm less than pleased with the level of service I'm getting for my money from your company. I'm also not happy with the fact I was duped into having to sign a 36mo contract, in which I still have 29 months remaining for services I'm paying for, but I'm not receiving. I sure hope that my system is able to restore itself before having to go thru 5 days of being unmonitored while waiting for your technician. In the mean time, I'll be happy to let my community homeowner's association, know what kind of service, or lack thereof, that Smith Monitoring will provide if they decided to leave ADT like i did! Hopefully others will read this and proceed with with caution when considering Smith Monitoring as their security provider.