Missing Link

A few years ago – back in 2008 – I entered the land of the homeowner and bought my first house. I knew from talking to my insurance company that I would get a discount on my homeowners insurance if I had an alarm system installed.  Being a technologist I also knew I wanted to see what existed beyond the traditional ADT / Brinks / Whoever big name alarm companies.  I knew there had to be more technologically advanced systems available.  I was right.

My buddy Jason pointed me to Alarm.com,  which is the technology behind the offerings of quite a few alarm companies now. It uses a cellular connection to connect your alarm back to alarm.com servers where you can monitor it via the Internet (and smart phones) and interact with your system from anywhere in the world. It also features some tie-ins to home automation systems, which at the time I was also exploring.  It sounded perfect.  For what I wanted – it was perfect.

I contacted Alarm.com for references of companies selling their service as a product offering, since Alarm.com doesn’t sell directly to the consumer. They recommended a company called FrontPoint Security, as they would sell me the equipment I needed (and the monitoring of the alarm), but allow me to spec out the components I needed / wanted and do a quick easy installation myself (This was something I was looking for at the time, I wanted to do the install myself). Alarm.com helpfully passed my information on to FrontPoint and I received a call from the company.   I ended up talking with their Chief Operating Officer, Peter Rogers.  Peter helpfully answered every question I could come up with and was a pleasure to work with.  I got the components I needed spec’d, ordered, and installed in very short order.  It was painless and I had a working (and pretty damn cool) alarm system.

I blogged about the system on my sister blog – YWGAV (on hiatus) – a few times.  FrontPoint noticed this and contacted me about some of the interesting things I was doing with their system. I felt comfortable endorsing their services as their support operations were top notch and the company was treating me very well as a customer. I was extraordinarily happy. I tested new service offerings and equipment (their network video services) and provided feedback.

I stopped having much time for home automation over the past couple of years, and didn’t do much more with the alarm system. It was working and doing what we wanted of it – that was good enough for me. Until we moved.

A few weeks after we moved – taking the alarm system with us (one of the reasons I wanted to own the equipment and be able to install it myself – I can take it wherever I want) I got a call from the central station to notify me of a fire alarm from my system. I figured this might be the result of a malfunction signal my system was reporting from our smoke detector, which got lost somewhere during the move.  I called them back and cancelled the alarm. The fire department showed up anyways as apparently their policy is to check an alarm out even if it’s cancelled – just to make sure.  A quick call to FrontPoint got that malfunctioning sensor off our account, and I figured that was the end of it.

I was wrong.

Late last week – around 130 in the morning on Friday – our phones rang. Being half asleep and neither Ann nor I being on call, we ignored them and fell back asleep. A few minutes later the doorbell rang. A lot. Looking outside we saw a couple of fire trucks sitting in front of our house, and firefighters in full gear clutching axes and appearing ready to burst in and save the day.  It kind of looked like the set of Rescue Me (had it been set in a suburb of Indianapolis…).

Apparently, the call we had ignored was from the central station to let us know there was a fire alarm from our house.  Except now, we don’t HAVE a fire alarm.   We tried explaining to the fire department, but they wanted us to call the central station and get the alarm cancelled.  While Ann was on the phone with the central station the fire department received an all clear call from their dispatch and finally left.   The central station then said that someone had entered the code into our alarm panel to cancel the alarm.   Neither Ann nor I had touched the panel.

For those keeping score – we now have two instances where the fire department was erroneously dispatched to my house for a fire alarm.  On BOTH occasions my actual alarm unit failed to issue an alarm locally, nor did it issue an alarm via SMS or Email, as it’s configured to do.

I called FrontPoint customer support expecting that they would be their usual helpful selves and would get this latest issue sorted out quickly. To my surprise, and disappointment, that has not been the case.

My initial call to support went alright – Phillip answered and dutifully took down all of the relevant information about the incident and promised to investigate and get back to me within a day or so.  He left a voicemail the next morning indicating that his investigation had discovered that the alarm had been triggered from our remote keypad.  This didn’t add up.  How could a remote keypad send an alarm signal – a fire alarm signal at that – with both of us sound asleep? How could someone enter the correct code to disarm / cancel the alarm when both of us were dealing with the fire department at the front door?   How come I completely failed to see this supposed activity from the remote keypad on my alarm.com logs that show all activity from my system?  (For those wondering – I *do* see activity from the night before, and I do also see us opening the door for the fire department at 1:43 AM, but I do not see ANYTHING between those two events.)  After Phillip followed up via email Monday morning I decided to pose those questions back to him – including screenshots of my alarm.com logs that show there was no activity on my system.  A near 48 hours later I have yet to receive any sort of response to those followup questions.

And that’s a shame.  I really liked FrontPoint.  It went beyond the equipment and the Alarm.com features – things I can get from a multitude of alarm companies locally now.  Their responsiveness and genuinely helpful support had been pillars of why I liked their company.  They had always been willing and able to make it right.

Now that they are apparently either not willing, or not able, to fix this issue – or even respond in a timely fashion – I’m left to wonder if perhaps it’s time I switch.

One thing is for certain – I can’t recommend this company any more. (See update 3 below)

[update 1 - 10/5/11]: Phillip from FrontPoint reached out shortly after this was posted.  A response is promised by close of business 10/5/11.

[update 2 - 10/5/11]: Received an email from Chris Villar – the CEO of FrontPoint in response to an email I sent prior to writing this post.  He’s engaged further resources on their end to address this issue for me.   Still concerned that it would take an email to someone that high up to get that level of effort, but appreciative nonetheless.

[update 3 - 10/5/11]:  Received a call, and email, from Philip Pearson (not the same Phillip from Update 1) – Director of Operations for FrontPoint.  He apologized for the sub-par response from support,  explained fully what happened,  why and how it happened, and what was done to fix it and prevent it from happening again.   While I will refrain from going into all of the technical details I will say the answer seems genuine and honest, it makes complete sense, and I’m comfortable that the company is taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again for me – or anybody else.   I’m satisfied with the end result, even if I’m not 100% happy with how things were initially handled.   I can appreciate when a company owns up to it’s mistakes and makes things right, which I feel they have done.