ADT Reviews

There were seven homes that were broken into. What happened was, I got a call. They said, "Your alarm's gone off. Should we call the police?" I said, "Yes, please do." They did but everything was secure when the police got there. The next morning, the alarm went off again. ADT called, "Do you want us to call the police?" I said, "No, don't. But thanks for calling me." I called a neighbor. I said, "How about driving by and see if there's a strange car in the neighborhood. If there is, don't go in there. Don't approach these people but take a picture of the tag." He said, "Well, the front door is ajar. We're going in." He had me on the phone. "Yeah, we're going in." He and another neighbor were going in.

They said, "No, I don't see anything out of place." I said, "Well, I'm coming up." It's a three-hour drive from my house in South Carolina. So, I drove up. The next day, a neighbor stopped by and said, "Fred, guess what? My house was broken into." I said, "Ours was too." Then, within the next three days, we found seven houses that had been broken into. None of them were full-time. They're all part-time homes. So, some local guys down in the city there had set up a squatter in a house in the middle of the other six. What they would do is, they would raid each house, carry all the merchandise to the one they were squatting in, and then every once in a while, they could drive to town to pawnshop houses and unloaded all the loot.

ADT called me twice from those events. After the first one, when the burglars didn't break anything getting into the house because I had a lock box on one of the porch columns. They took a shovel and knocked it off and got a key to go in. So, they didn't have to break any windows or any doors, and they went in and when the alarm went off, they quickly spit out up in the woods. They sat there. They saw the police come, check all the doors, and leave. And then they came back out of the woods and said, "Oh, that little blue octagonal sign that says ADT security, that's for real." Some people put that out even though they haven't bought the service. So then they started saying, "Well, we got caught on camera." They did find a camera, and they took it and they smashed it.

When ADT called me and my wife heard me talk to the ADT, she said, "What's going on?" I said, "Well, the cabin has been broken into." She quickly went to the laptop and brought up the account on ADT. She saw the two people that broke in walking up to the front door. She got them on camera. So the next day when I got up there, I copied the clip onto my phone and took it to the Sheriff's Department. I played it for them and passed it to them. They said, "Oh, yeah, these are locals. We know who these people are." Ours was the only house that had alarm coverage and had a camera. And if the camera hadn't been there, nobody would have caught these guys.

Overall, ADT is terrific, and it's not expensive. After we got the alarm, going up there and we came back to Columbia, the previous owners had a system and it was not ADT. We called ADT and said, "Let's convert this to your system." Six months after, the cabin in Columbia, South Carolina was broken into. And again, the system deterred them from getting all the way inside the house.

I have two cameras. I have all of the little sensors and whatever that are in the house. They put in more sensors than I knew. I come home one morning shortly after it had been done. When you go out of my back door, you walk into my garage. There is another door through the garage into the patio which leads outside, and I had pulled the door closed but not tight-closed. The windows in the patio were open and the breeze blew, and it opened the door too far. So, when I come home that morning at 8 o'clock, I've got two sheriff deputies at my house for no apparent reason. But I didn't know this thing was on the back of the door. So, I told them, “This will never happen again.” And we were good to go. So, ADT works.

Overall, I don't have a problem with my system. A strange thing happened here three weeks ago. Down in the area between New York City and New Jersey was an earthquake. It happened on a Wednesday morning and I'm 130 miles away from New York City, so it didn't affect us. That Saturday, I'm sitting in my master bedroom, and all of a sudden, everything in this house started going, “Beep, beep, beep.” And then it's like, “What in the hell am I hearing?” So, I went out in the kitchen. In the meantime, ADT had called to see if there's anything going on here at the house. I couldn't get to the phone fast enough. When I got to the phone, the lady who had left a message, I couldn't understand what it was that she had said about, “Call this number.”

So, now I come back in to look and look up the number. In the meantime, my phone's ringing. My son's on the other end of the line. He said to me, “Are you okay?” I said, “Yes.” Now, he's got ADT on his line because when they couldn't get ahold of me, they called him in Tennessee. So, we were trying to figure out what's going on, and nothing's registering. By the time that the sirens finally went off and I managed to shut all of that noise, it was fine.

Sean said when ADT called him, he looked to see, because I've got two sets of sliding glass doors that are at 90-degree angles from each other that go out onto my deck. So, he had looked there. He had looked out in the car port. He didn't see anything that looked askew or anything that was wrong. He couldn't figure it out. I've been in the house. The house was locked. The system was on, and I didn't know what was going on. The light bulb dawns about two days later, and I called him back. I said, “Probably what happened was that the tremors from New York City had finally made their way west just enough to jar the house.” It did not jar the house bad enough to make any glass rattle or pictures fall.

I was sitting in the bedroom, and not a thing in this world was going on in this house, ‘cause I come out to look and see what had caused all this commotion. And the only thing I can figure is the earth shook just enough to set the system off. And when they could not get ahold of me, they got ahold of him. Then he looked at the cameras ‘cause he's on with me so he can see what's going on here. He couldn't find anything wrong. I couldn't find anything wrong. And that's the only other thing it could have been.

I have gotten false alarms, and my biggest problem was I got hearing aids and you cannot sleep with hearing aids in your ears because they could risk damaging your ears. So, I take my hearing aids out. The little box is downstairs in the kitchen. I'm upstairs in the back of the house in my bed sleeping. I've gotten alarms where the police come over and the alarm never woke me up. So, somebody could have actually been in the house and killed me because I never heard the alarm.

So, I had a lot of talks with ADT about that. I said, "Well, this is useless to me." I said, "It don't wake me up out of a dead sleep. I got hearing aids. I sleep without them." So, after talking to about six idiots over there, I finally found somebody that was intelligent. When you call on the phone, the first couple you talk to are not intelligent. The guy said, "All right, we're gonna put a siren in. So, we're gonna order the siren. We'll receive it here and then we'll have a technician come out and hook it up."

A week later, I got a call, "Oh, we're gonna set your appointment. We have the siren." So, the guy came over, walked in the house, and he got a big box. I said, "Something don't look right." He said, "It's an outside siren." I said, "No, an inside siren that will wake me up out of a dead sleep." He said, "Yeah, they ordered the wrong one. You want the little one that you put four batteries in." I said, "Well, customer service is supposed to know more than me. They're idiots."

He called in on his side, the technical service department, and they ordered the right one. Then I get the right one, he came over, and he hooked it all up, and it works fine. It's woken me up a couple of times during the night. Normally, when I wake up, it's because it's cold during the winter and the magnets that are two-way taped to everything fall off. So, when they fall off, it sets off the alarm. Other than that, since they put that in, I do get false alarms, but it's for the magnets falling off the windows, which are two-way taped.

I wish they would change that magnet so you could pop it apart and put a screw in it, then I would screw everything. But they're adamant on using two-way tape. Two-way tapes don't last forever. I went out and bought some Gorilla brand two-way tape and I just put that on one door and I'm gonna see how that holds up. But that's an ongoing problem because I've had that just fall off the wall and I'm still on the original battery from 2015, and the thing came off the window three times already.

ADT is a great system, and I'd tell others the only problem I got is everything's two-way taped to everything and the tape fails, and I get a signal, and the alarm goes off. And if I'm not home, which happened when I was on vacation, the police arrived. There was one point in my life where I got a letter from the town that says I owe $500 for false alarm. People are reported here and there's nothing here, and they were gonna charge me. Then I had to draw them a sketch, took pictures of the windows, said, "Hey, I'm on motion ones. Excuse me, you don't have to break a window for my alarm to go off." I said, "I will put it on now and you're gonna go out there and you're gonna shake the screen like you're trying to move the screen to get in, it'll tell you the alarm is off." He said, "Oh, you got a good system." I got a good system for that purpose.

I said, "My window is 3 feet off the ground." I don't need somebody inside for the alarm to go off. I want the alarm to go off before they come inside, which is why I opted for the motion sensors. Every single windows got a big motion sensor on it and the doors got the regular sensors. But every single window has a motion sensor on it on the first floor. Not on the second floor. 'Cause you're gonna bring a 28-foot ladder over to get into the second floor.

As far as pricing, ADt just had a promotion that my price will drop down to this and I'm locked in for five years. And then in five years, we're gonna renegotiate a price. I use the app. I have a problem with the app. I set the alarm from the phone. So, I pulled out the driveway, I hit the button, and I set it. I come home, and I go to shut the alarm off so I can go in the house, I'm on the app and the app won't connect. I'm sitting in my driveway in front of the door. They've come over and they tried this, they tried that, and they took me off AT&T, put me on Verizon, but everybody on this cul-de-sac has problem with their phones. So, after going round and round with that, they came over and they gave me a keypad, and they hooked a keypad up. Now, when I go out, I hit the keypad and set it. When I come home, I hit the keypad and unlock it. The app doesn't work to set the alarm off when I pull in the driveway.

We also have ADT in our family home in Louisiana. I have converged more with ADT for a big family home in Louisiana than I have for Houston. I've had issues with the ADT in Louisiana when the system just started alarming. We found out that that system was burn out and we were told that we needed another system. So, since we wanted to keep that home secured, we had them come out to install the new system and it was upgraded.

Contacting ADT is rather difficult. Like a lot of the companies now, they do this automation and you have to answer all of those questions even though you keep telling them that you need to speak to a customer service rep for something. And it takes them a while before they eventually would tell you to hold on and they'd let you speak to the next available representative. Normally, I become a little frustrated because I passionately don't like automation.

All in all, with ADT in my home, I feel safe because my windows are barred and my system is on now. I'm 72 and I have to have that sense of security. When I go to bed at night, I have this ritual where even though I know I have not been at my house today and I know that that door is locked and my burglar alarm is on, I have to go and check before I go to bed. I do that and I can sleep. Also, because of the ADT sign that's posted out front, people kinda know. And they can view and see the bars on the window. I've also never had an attempted break-in.

If you're seeking a security system that you can feel comfortable with, I would go with ADT. We were comfortable with our parents who are both elderly being in the house in Louisiana because the system was on. My mother knew how to operate it and they felt safe in their home because of ADT. And it's in North Louisiana which is a very small country town. But we, the children, had to feel that they were safe and we did by installing ADT at that house. And my parents have been gone for almost 15 years now but we still have the system to protect the house.

When the house was burglarized, the system did what it was supposed to do. The people went and pulled the electricity box off of the back of the house but because the ADT system had that backup, when they broke a window and got into the family house, there was not a sensor on that window because they went into the bathroom window. Then when he went and opened that door, the alarm went off and it scared them away.

So that's what we were glad of because had the system not worked, they could have truly caused damage. Then, at 4 o'clock in the morning, because my name is one of the contacts, ADT called me and they told me what happened. They did said that the police had already been notified and that I could call the police. So they did what they were supposed to do. And the only thing we had the damage was our windows because the burglars tried to check the front windows and they were throwing rocks to see if the sensor was going to go off.

After he punched the phones in, everything else messed up, including my wife's iPad and the connections. It was a fiasco back and forth. ADT said, "They can't do it. You gotta call Comcast, your cable provider." My wife spent six hours one day and she couldn't get anybody to fix it until the second day. She finally connected with one guy from Comcast that knew how to do it, and he did it in less than an hour. He just ran it through the system. He knew what to punch in and how to delete this and how to recreate this and bring up the account and brought her iPad up-to-date.

I had a camera that the battery went dead. I was under the impression that these batteries don't go dead. They stay charged up all the time. But he messed with it and thought he had it. So he switched cameras. But the following day, the battery went dead again. So ADT said, "Well, we gotta send the manager and an employee out." But nobody could come out. The manager couldn't come out. He was on vacation. So that didn't work. Then they sent the original guy that installed the phone and my wife didn't want him back here.

The guy had to put a whole new camera in again, and then found out that it was a wiring in the camera that caused everything. So far, it's working great. But the only thing is this guy was bragging about the cameras and about deliveries coming to your door. I said, "Okay." He said, "You'll get notified whenever you get a package or delivery." But I haven't called them back up again. I told him, "Don't call. Don't even bother. Don't even mess with that."

When I get a package, I don't get any notification on my phone. All I get is when pedestrians walk by and I get this beep on my phone because they put the red zone on the side of the sidewalk. So I never know when I get a package delivered. One time I had a package delivered two hours ago and my wife said, "Hey, you know what? Go check the front door. I see it on my iPad here that it got delivered." Sure enough, I looked out there and there was a package. The phone never did anything and this guy bragged about how good it does. I paid about $300 for the camera. I only had two cameras put in. That's kind of high price. But when I turn my cameras on at night time, it looks like you could actually see the person walking by or it just brings more daylight. My other cameras didn't do that. So I was impressed with that one.

I opted to receive a free quote for ADT home security upon purchasing a house. The representative I spoke to seemed helpful, answering my questions and tailoring the service to my needs. I was quoted for three door sensors, a motion sensor, and base station. Due to a promotion, they included a free Google Nest Camera and Yale Electronic Deadbolt. The monthly service charge was going to be $45.69. However, the representative lied to me about the capability of the motion sensor, an integral portion of the system. I disclosed that I have cats and needed this capability. The rep stated that it will not activate the alarm for animals under 30 lbs. The rep further assured me that if I wanted to return the system within the first six months, I was guaranteed a full refund for equipment and services. The representative also stated that billing would not initiate until I installed the system (billing initiated before I installed the system).

The quote took about an hour to walk through all the options, and set up my plan. I wanted some time to think about the package and shop around, and asked the rep if the quote could be saved. The rep said that the quote could not be saved, and that I would have to set everything back up next time I called. This pressured me into making a decision then, which I felt was safe since the rep stated that that billing would not initiate until the system was installed, and that I had a full money back guarantee within the first six months. The cost of the equipment was $373.43, under the condition that I would install it myself.

I received the equipment in the mail within a week. During that time I shopped around and found that SimpliSafe provided a more competitive package. They offer a motion sensor, three door sensors, and a base station with a $25 monthly service fee. I called ADT back before my system was installed and expressed a desire to return the equipment since I found a cheaper rate.

The rep suddenly was able to reduce my monthly service fee by removing some frivolous services from the plan, including: cloud storage for the "free" Google Nest camera, the paid service for the ADT Monitor rep to review the Google Nest camera feed during a break-in and provide a description of the burglar to the police, and something else. That's right, ADT will not look at your camera unless you pay them an extra fee a month, real classy. I decided the new ADT package was acceptable because I just needed the sensors and alarm. The representative said I should expect a new contract shortly, and my new rate would be lowered to $25 a month.

Well the first service payment came the following day (before I installed my system) and it was still for the full amount of $45.69. I called them and they apologized, blaming it on lag in their system. They would work to resolve it. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and installed my system. After system set up, I discovered that my cats would trigger the motion sensor whenever they hopped on an elevated surface (cat tree, table, couch, counter, etc). The ADT motion sensor is not size based, but rather height based. Anything above waist height will trigger the alarm. After several false alarms, I stopped using the motion sensor all-together. However, the police were called to my home multiple times when I was away on work trips in different timezones, and unable to answer the call from the Security Monitor. This was a waste of public resources.

Furthermore, the Security Monitor cannot disable the alarm for the customer, even with the customer's verbal direction. The customer must go in the ADT app and manually disable it themselves. Otherwise the alarm will disable itself after 10 minutes or so. The alarm would be a very effective burglar deterrent since it is incredibly loud, but awful for pets. That's not the end of my problems though. I continued to be charged the full amount of $45.69. I called back in March when it happened again. The representative (Dominic) assured me they would look into it, and would call me back. They did not call me back, so I followed up a week later.

The representative I got on this go around spoke incoherently and was slurring their words. After much convincing, the representative provided my information to his manager (Blaire) and she was going to call me back. Surprisingly, Blaire did call me back. After understanding the situation, Blaire apologized for the issues to date and offered me a two month credit in addition to updating my service plan as was previously promised. Blaire shared that I would need to sign an updated contract to reduce the monthly plan.

The updated contract was never sent. The credit was never applied. I was still charged the full $45.69 during the first and second month which was supposed to be credited. I called back and told the representative my experience to date, and I that I was looking to cancel my service, return my equipment, and receive a full refund for the equipment and services. The representative shared (Amoire) that since I installed my equipment myself, I was only eligible for a refund within the first 30 days of installation. The rep further clarified equipment refunds can only be issued after 3 visits from technicians. This directly contradicted the six-month money back guarantee I was told during the initial sale.

I also shared that I was lied to about the capability of motion sensor. The rep stated she was recording notes from our conversation, and would elevate this issue up her chain. Someone (presumably her supervisor) would review the recorded call history, make a determination, and send me an email within two business days. Again, no email came.

I called back a week later. This rep (Tanisha) reviewed my account. She also shared that a cancellation was submitted on the account on the day of my previous call. Tanisha was very careful in her wording though. She hadn't mentioned anything about a refund. I poked that topic.Tanisha said there was nothing in my account notes about a refund.

After some back and forth, Tanisha submitted a refund request had been submitted for the overpayments. Again with the careful wording. She was only putting in a refund for the difference in service costs from the $45.69 to $25 (about $80 at this point for 4 months of service). I had been charged $556.19 to date. I pushed backed, citing the previous calls and that verbal agreements are legally binding. Tanisha said that they calls would have to be reviewed. I asked her about the review process, and whether there was a specific department. Tanisha specifically said "there is a back office that performs the reviews". Incredibly ambiguous.

I requested copies of my calls that ADT had recorded to date. Tanisha stated she would look into it. Since the ADT Account Management team had fallen through on their follow-ups in the past, I did not trust her. After much back and forth, and a hold period, Tanisha stated that my case was being elevated. She would remain the point of contact, and would follow-up with me in 3-5 business days. Tanisha confirmed that my account had been cancelled, a refund for the overpayments on my account would be issued within two business days, she was further investigating full refunds for the equipment and remaining services charges, and that she was further investigating releasing my recorded calls to date.

Shortly after my call with Tanisha, I called back to verify with another representative that Tanisha had recorded the case notes correctly. The rep (Stephanie) brought up my account, and read off the notes Tanisha had left. Tanisha left out my request for copies of the recorded phone calls, and misrecorded the time period I was told about (Tanisha recorded that I was told about a 90-day period, not a 6 month period). Stephanie confirmed the escalation process, and that Tanisha could be assigned as the point of contact. However, Stephanie could not confirm that Tanisha had completed the process, since Tanisha and their signal upper manager were both offline, presumably at lunch.

I also that Stephanie provide the records of my previous phone calls with ADT. Stephanie stated that she did not have the authority to provide them. I requested that Stephanie pass my information along to the manager so they could call me back once they got back from lunch so I could request copies of my recorded calls directly from the decision maker, Stephanie agreed, saying the manager would call me back in 30 minutes.

The manager (Eve) did not return my call within the hour, so I called back and spoke to another rep to connect me. After a conversation with the manager, she stated that I am required to submit a subpoena for the company to release copies of the recorded calls. I have attached the email where Eve provided this direction. Eve reiterated the written contract policy, I reiterated what the initial reps had verbally communicated. Eve clarified that the review process takes 24-48 hours to complete, then said we should wait 72 hours "just to be sure". This was a different timeline from what Tanisha had previously told me. Eve stated she would call me back. I am pursuing the subpoena path while I wait for ADT to issue my refund. If you would like to avoid a legal headache while attempting to protect your home, avoid ADT.