Guardian Protection

I am in a wheelchair, and I have mobility and physical issues, and I also have hearing problems. I like the fact that I can take the panel from room to room with me and have it at hand where I can deal with it instead of having it up. The system I had before was on the wall and I had to stand up out of my wheelchair and reach above me to use it, which was quite inconvenient. But with Guardian, it's wherever I need it to be. I can also do the same way with the strobe and siren system, which is a little plug-in thing that goes into the wall like your system.

The other system that I had would announce whenever there was a tornado warning for my particular area. There was a kind of a beeping tone that would come across to let me know, and a message that appeared on the screen that there was a tornado within my area. I needed to be aware of that as a safety feature. I do miss that and I wish Guardian does that too. Also, I really wish there was a manual that came with it. I have a great deal of difficulty figuring things out by guess and by gosh, and I'm very good with electronics. I wish it was a small six-page pamphlet that explains, "If you want to do this, this is how you do it or this is what this feature is," type thing.

The strobe light makes me feel very much more secure. I have a feeling that several times people come to my door and I don't even know they're there. I have had a few times when people have tried to deliver packages and I've had to call them to come back two or three times and told them they have to call me and let me know that they were at the door because I would not come to pick up the package because I wouldn't know they were at my door. That was a little bit scary.

The tech set up the system in the main room, so it's where it is most of the time, but when I go to bed at night, I take the strobe and the pad in my room with me as well as I have a wristband. He also was able to hook it up to go through by telephone and internet. With the other system I had before, I had a wired house internet. They couldn't put that through which didn't make much sense to me. So now, I feel much better because I've got this band that's on my wrist that I can take with me. I can access it with my cellphone as well as I can move the pad around where I am.

I had fallen twice in my house when I had the other system. I had really stumbled and my footing ran away from me and I ended up sitting on the floor, and I couldn't get back up. I had to crawl to my cellphone because I couldn't even reach the security pad since I had to stand up to hit it to make it go off. But with Guardian, I feel much more secure that I've got enough systems if that happened again.

The only issue I've had was with the motion detector in my living room. It just was going off for no reason and we couldn't figure out why. So, they ended up moving it away from the heat vent figuring that maybe something was being blown in front of it. That didn't fix the problem, so they came back again and put a meter on it and found that there was something in there that was draining the battery. And when I got a low battery, it was sounding the alarm. It was a minor issue, but I wish they had put the meter on and checked that the first time that they came out. It went on for a couple of weeks. When it went off once, they came out to check and then moved it, and then it was fine for a week. And then it went off three times in four days. And I said, "This can't go on, you guys gotta come back," and that was when they replaced it, and it has been fine since then.

The other issue I had was with smoke detectors. I got this new generation of smoke detector that has a 10-year battery in it, so you don't replace them until you replace the smoke detectors. So, it went off one Saturday morning for no reason. Nobody was cooking in the house. So, they came out and they checked it, and the guy told me that there was a recall on the date codes that I had installed. So, he replaced all three of the smoke detectors in the house. But about a week later, another one went off, and they found that that was the same issue as the motion sensors. It was draining the battery, so they had to replace that. So far, the people have been very nice and very easy to deal with. I'd recommend Guardian Protection.

By now, I've had Guardian for almost six years and I would definitely recommend them. I love it. I'm an elderly person and I’ve got my little grandson that I’m raising. He was only 6 at that time and it was a little difficult for me. All the bedrooms and stuff are upstairs and I slept little at night because we were having some problems with some children. They were mostly breaking in to elderly people’s homes for the stuff they thought they could find. But that got all figured out. There were people right here and they took care of the situation. I felt really secured and I sleep well at night knowing that the system would go off if it’s necessary.

We also had an incident where there were kids who thought it was fun to go around and hit people’s windows. When they hit one and knocked it off, Guardian came right out and fixed it for me. They didn’t even hesitate. Their reps have also always been wonderful. Every time I set the system off, they would always call in to check on me and they were always right there to do whatever I’ve needed. Plus they’ve always been very sweet. I couldn’t ask for better.

The system's features are also wonderful and the smartphone features are really good. If I’m upstairs and I forgot to turn the system on, there’s some notice and it lets me correct the problem without having to come down the stairs, which is a little difficult sometimes since I’m 76 years old. The only problem I have is that I can’t reach the fire alarm to change the battery unless I climb up on the ladder. But the fire department is right next to me here. Then one time, for some reason, I had the system go off in the office or wherever it's supposed to go off but it didn’t go off here. Guardian had to call my sister, who was on the list of emergency contacts, and they called the police station. The next thing I knew, my sister was breaking in. I thought that my alarm wasn’t going off but Guardian had them here and they were checking in, and I appreciated that. Guardian came, checked the system and fixed whatever was wrong with it.

The first rep that came was excellent. He was the actual installer and he was very patient and detailed. He didn't get irritated no matter how many questions I asked. He took his time with me and my husband over the questions that we had, especially on the online system, when we were first setting everything up. I didn’t like the way the cameras were positioned. So he went back up on the ladder and he repositioned it.

Later on, I still had to call because I wanted one changed from the side of the house to the garage, and somebody else came out for that. He was an older gentleman and his ladder wasn’t tall enough. He couldn't get up way high so he couldn’t reach it. But he was really nice and helpful as much as he could. He said he would put in to have somebody else come out. Somebody was supposed to call to come back out and nobody every called. But that was for the second go-around because for the first go-around, the younger guy did everything that I asked him to do.

I like the features in my system. I bring up the app on my tablet and phone. But I noticed that I can't bring up the doorbell on the computer. I can only bring it up on the tablet or smartphone. So when I’m on the computer and I pull up all the cameras live, it pulls up everything, but the doorbell camera. The rep told me that I can bring it up but it won't be live. It will only be video that have been saved throughout the day that triggered the doorbell. But other than that, I like it a lot. It was really nice that Guardian was able to put the alarm on this house. When we go to sleep at night, it is extra security. When my husband’s not home, I can put it on. It is good knowing that I can do that, and if these doors opened up, it would set off the alarm. I like that.

I had another discussion about a month or so ago with an in-office inside sales person. Having read my contract and if it started if I did nothing, the contract would roll over for another five years which is way too long for anything to roll over. But the rep was very helpful in, first of all, agreeing that we would go on a month to month basis when this contract terminated. But we both agreed that probably around April or May of this year, we would discuss various other renewal options for the security system in the house and different products that are now available through Guardian. So it's all very good.

Also, the overall features were great. But one caveat about them is that I just have a very basic, barebones system here. That's really all that I feel that I need, although I am open to further discussion when I talk to the sales folks in April or May. Also, I don’t like the pricing on the system. It's $45 a month, and when I balked at that, almost five years ago when the house was being constructed, I was told that that monthly premium or fee embraced the fact that they were installing a system in the house, and they wanted to amortize it over five years.

I get that, but I came from a home where the billing was about $27 a month because the system had been installed a long time ago and I was on a month to month. The pricing is a bit high, for what other competitors are offering. And when I spoke to the salesperson, I told him that we need to talk about that and we need to see what's available going forward.

And another critique was the system alarm went off one time. I was away and about 650 miles from home. For whatever reason, Guardian called the police before they called me. That was just unacceptable because I had to pay the police for a false alarm. It was at that point that the Guardian rep told me that sometimes, these systems will go off if a fly or a spider is on or moves across the motion detector.

I never knew that and it has concerned me every time I leave this house and I put the motion detector on. So that's a technical issue that we need to talk about going forward because I don’t want false alarms especially if I'm out of state. I don’t want to pay the police to come out here and look at a house that's got a false alarm going on. Even so, any time that I've needed Guardian, they have been available for consultation. They are also very easy to deal with.