Sonitrol Security Systems

This is a dual review as with many of my reviews: rave for Fresno Sonitrol, slam for San Francisco Sonitrol. I worked at a school for almost 5 years in Fresno and we never ever had a minute’s problem with Sonitrol. In fact, many times when I worked late and I was the last person there, they would use their system «just to check on me that I was okay» and I could tell them then and there I was and when I would code out.
Opposite nightmares in San Francisco. Daily issues with systems breaking, policies, procedures, switch all out problem and just all around not working. Unless you have a stellar sales rep that stay 100% on the technicians, switch and other employees, your system doesn’t work. I had one rep for about 2 years that really helped me isolate our continuing code out problems, call outs to the police, etc. However, since then, nothing.
I’d love to change our Sonitrol Security System, but once you invest in the audio system, the wiring doesn’t work for a traditional system. You are stuck!
~Ms. Ali

We have had Sonitrol for going on 2 years with still no completion of the job. We receive calls at all hours of the night for small issues and are not calling the right people. They have billed us incorrectly, and without any clear detail on our invoices. We made several requests for service and they are completely ignored. When we finally got them out for a service call, they don’t fix the problem completely and want to charge for a visit when the system has never operated properly. One of their service reps mentioned to us that this job was too big for them and they don’t know how to handle it. They have had to come out over 10 times just to count the number of doors we have and they still cannot keep it straight.

I work somewhere where we count on CCTV surveillance system 24 hours a day. My school had an account with the company Sonitrol and there service associated with CCTV surveillance systems is piss poor to say the least. They have very poor customer service with numerous empty promises of improving things, missed appointments and so on and so forth. There’s the old saying that says, «The squeaky wheel gets the oil.» Once they received enough complaitns or a large scale complaint, they responded to my place of business and put on a dog and pony show of promises and improvements they had planned. None of which ever occurred and were left in the hands of our IT department to figure out.
On a lighter note, there alarm systems are top knotch and their associated alarm «listening posts» (equipment they can use to listen into the business when an alarm has sounded) makes their alarm system very useful and have led to the protection of /​prevention of the stealing of property.
So I would say thumbs up on their alarm systems but definitely thumbs down on their CCTV surveillance systems and associated customer service.

I tried to contact Sonitrol for a home security system last week as I’d heard they were one of the best. I called the national toll free number and spoke with someone who took my information and then gave me the number to the local Bay Area office. That office was in Fresno, for some reason. I kept asking to be given the number for a more local office and they would connect me to someone and I would end up on hold for at least 10 minutes. Every time I called back they apologized and repeated! I hoped that the HQ would have communicated my information and they did not… so I never got a call and it has been over a week. The good news is I have gone with another company and it appears that I chose well. Sonitrol does not seem to have any sense of customer service. Unfortunate for them — they lost a sale.

I’ve given Sonitrol many chances to make up for their bad business policies, so now that I have no other way to warn people, I’m using Unilocal to get the word out.
My family owns restaurants and has been secured by Sonitrol for over 20 years. The sales people and technicians in Oakland must be of a different breed than the ones in SF because they’re really incompetent.
I asked for extra security when there was an increase in break-​ins in my area. The salesman said they’d get to it right away and I never heard from him again. No one came by, no calls, no emails. So I had to contact him again and he said he thought they had done it, but would check and let me know. Again, he leaves me hanging. Then literally 6 months pass and I get a bill for the installation and prorated monitoring– what?! So once again I had to initiate contact, and ask what this was about. So he says they’ll need to do research and see what happened. I could tell him– nothing happened. No installation, no monitoring, but a hefty bill. bad business. So after cc’ing the email chain to their customer complaint email, the salesman wakes up and sends someone to do the installation. 6 months after he said he would. And the technician was rude and condescending. great. but i thought i could let that pass.
Then a week ago they sent someone, unsolicited, to move a transformer from one outlet to another. How did that rack up a $ 189 bill? I call that unreasonable and bad business. moving from one outlet to another takes what– 2 seconds? i understand it’s a bad economy, but there are other ways to make money– by earning it. performing an arbitrary service– a correction of a conscious decision by their original tech to use this outlet– that was unsolicited and then forcing me to pay for it is not ok. I explained this to them and asked them to reconsider– so they said they’d take the trip expense off– $ 70 so I’m left paying $ 119…for what!!! this is BS.
The two stars are for the monitoring– which is top notch. The sales team gets no stars.