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.

But, for a new system, I shouldn't have had to replace the battery for at least two or three years. I've got two more doors that have sensors on them and I haven't had any problem with batteries going dead on me. I'm assuming that the battery was either bad or instead of getting a new sensor out of a package, they gave me one that wasn't new.

I have also called Guardian about something I didn't understand about the alarm system. The signal of the keyfob on the outside of the house didn't go to the monitor and the alarm went off. It had a big red light on the screen 'cause I disarmed it when I came in the door from outside. It worked that way and I've been doing that ever since. I've never bothered to fool with the screen with the other alarms that I had but for this one, I set it, I have 45 seconds to get out the door and there seems to be no problem with it. I had my phone off too and I didn't know it wasn't armed properly. Still, I've not had any major problems with the Guardian security system while I've had several alarms that went off with my old system. Also, I was afraid to walk out of my house the way things were around the community but with Guardian, I felt somewhat secure.

About a month ago, we kept getting a low battery alarm on the recorder. My husband frequently travels so the recorder is important. And when I go to bed at night, I like knowing that if somebody comes in, I’m gonna know who it is. I called Guardian about it and the individual that answered the phone asked me if I put a battery in it. I told him that I did not because it was the third time in six weeks and that something was wrong with the unit. He looked back and saw that we had calls and had a service call. He then said that they would have to send somebody up to come out.

The first available date that the rep gave me was 10 days away, but I wasn’t okay with that. 10 days is a long time when you are talking about home protection. But he said that he couldn’t make any appointments for anything other than the first available date. Then I asked to speak to his supervisor, but it was 7 o’clock in the evening. There was no supervisor present and that he was the on-call person. I would have to call back the next day and speak to someone else because it was not acceptable. But before I could call back the next day, a technician called and said that he had an opening. He finished a job on the other side of our neighborhood and he could be there in 20 minutes. He came and he replaced the unit.

I also asked the technician why we kept having the low battery thing. We put the proper batteries in it and it should last for longer than two weeks. He went downstairs and he came back and said that the problem was the communication box. It needs to be located on the first floor, not in the basement. The unit tries too hard to connect with the box, which is what comes to our monitoring center, and it is eating up our batteries. So, he moved the unit up on the first floor in a very discreet location. Everything has been operating wonderfully since. It was the worst experience I’ve had, but it was resolved very easily as soon as I talked to a technician. We have also encouraged other people who are building to have Guardian installed. They offered free installation while we were building the house. And Guardian is the perfect way to go.

The employees of Guardian who came and helped us out were phenomenal. Everybody’s been really nice. The first night, it was hilarious. I hit the wrong code. I did the emergency code and they called me. I got the numbers all backwards so I had to write them again. But it was nice. At least they called. Now we’re becoming pros with the system. The features in the system are awesome. We’re impressed with everything, especially the garage door. We’re very happy. We didn’t think we would really ever need security but nowadays the way it is, you’re better off. The world is changing, not for the better.