Armor Security

Review: We have know [redacted] (hereby referred to as [redacted]) for a few years and had him install our security system. However in the past 3/4 years he has stopped in and switched our systems over to other systems and the cost of the monitoring keeps going up until this time it is now $45.00 per month.

(1) On 2/12/2014 I discussed getting 4 camera's mounted outside of the home. I expressed to him that I did not want cheap cameras (those used on Bigfoot that only catches blurs) and he told me that a good camera would cost about $300-$350. In good faith and knowing him for quite some time, I gave $1200 to purchase the equipment. Nothing was discussed about the labor. I had an idea of what that would cost as well, so I budgeted for it. Otherwise, I would not have asked him to perform the services.

(2) About 2 weeks later I called him to see when the camera's would be installed and he claimed that he had to go to Richmond to pick up the equipment. The next day he called me back to say he had spend on my money on some good equipment and that he would be out to install.

(3) Time went by and I would call him for a time when the installment would take place and he proceeded to tell me he had broken his ribs and could not climb up on a ladder. He did not get to the installment until May 28/29, 2014, three and a half months later.

(4) At the end of the day when he had completed the installment I asked him what money I owed him and he said none and that the 1200 covered everything. My radar went up as I knew he had told me he had spent all the money on the equipment several weeks back. He laughed out loud and said I could give him more money if I wanted to. I did not laugh because I knew what he had done. Throughout knowing [redacted] he has expressed to me his money problem issues and at one time asked if we would be interested in investing in his company and paying us back monthly with a good interest rate?""":>>>???

(5) The system was up and running but the pictures were poor. However he stated he did not know how to run the wiring to hook up to our computer for monitoring on line and that I would have to contact [redacted] for that service. We have been told differently since then. He also did a very sloppy and ugly installation of the wiring coming from the ceiling etc.

(6) On June 2, 2014, within 4 days of installation, at 6:48 am a trash truck backed into our front yard. My mother was watching and she witnessed the driver get out of his truck, get the trash out of our container, walk around to the back and put it in the truck then proceed to walk across our front yard, the opposite way of the driver's side of the truck. She opened up the door and he looked at her, threw up his arms in the air and said "sorry" and then turned around and got into his truck and turned right proceeding south, which he came from the south when he backed his truck in the driveway. These trucks have never done this before, always stopping on the street. If there had been an incident, which there was, the cheap camera did not do its job. I figure about 60 seconds were lost. As far as movement before and after, constant cars are passing on the street and the camera picked all that up.

(7) I went back to camera to review what had happened. It shows the driver of the trash truck getting out of the truck and getting the garbage bag out of our garbage container. Then there was a stop in the monitoring and it picked back up when he got into his truck and drove away.

(8) This is when it dawned on me cheap camera's and we had been taken by [redacted].

(9) I called [redacted] about the issue and he said that it was just bad luck. I asked him what those cameras cost and he said 75.00. I told him that was not the verbal agreement that we had and that I wanted to know the price of all the equipment. When searching on the internet, the camera's were indeed very cheap. I told him that he did not put in good cameras and he denied it. On that day, I started texting him about the situation stating that I was very upset with how he had handled customer services and the money that I, in good faith, gave him up front to purchase the equipment. I would not have expected him to buy them with his own money, He then tells me he got the equipment out of [redacted] from Texas and that I could not get any information from them as only a distributor could. I questioned him about the Richmond information he had given me earlier and he started back-peddling and making things worse by stating everyone in the business knows that it costs $350 per camera, no matter what the type of camera it is for installment. I told him that he was again lying and that he had never conveyed this information to me. He told me he would get the information about the equipment and has failed to do so at this time. He also started saying stupid things trying to justify the cameras and the equipment, none of which made any sense to me. He then claimed that he installed this as a favor because this is not what he usually does and that he only profited about $148.00 and I just told him that was not my problem. He agreed to do the job and he should not have scammed us. When I sent him the first text message, he called me back laughing saying that it was a joke and I told him it was no joke and there are issues here that need to be resolved. He said his brother was the one who did the camera services. The more he talked the more lies came out of him.

(10) Yesterday, I had [redacted] come in and changed over to their security company. They were able to use the equipment [redacted] had installed, but in working with the cameras, white glares came oover the screens as there was no picture and two of the camera's are not functioning properly, mostly black all the time and picture quality is very, very poor. I had also sent [redacted] a text message stating that we no longer needed his services of $45.00 per month. I still wanted to know about the camera's and their price and the price for the DVR digital watchdog.

(11) As [redacted] responsible for the camera's under warranty, this means that the camera's need to be replaced. However, since [redacted] has been caught in lies and clearly scamming us with the cheapest camera's he could find and pocketing the rest of the money, I am forced to purchase better camera's, pay for having the internet hooked up, which should have been included in the original running of the wires.

(12) It was also brought to my attention that the reason he would keep hooking us up with other companies is that he may be a broker and each time would gain more money in his pocket by switching us and each time the monitoring would be higher. With this last set of changes in the monitoring system, I do not believe we were hooked to anyone if something went wrong. We had batteries that had gotten low and usually the security people would call and we had not had any calls for quite along time, so that whole aspect became suspect as well.Desired Settlement: I am getting a proposal to upgrade the camera's, have them installed and run the [redacted] wires from the DVR to the router.

(1) Options for Settlement:

(a) [redacted] to give me back the $1200 and pick up his cameras, DVR and his "radio". The labor for doing the wiring can stay, which would be donation for his deceitful business practices and scam artist ways and not responding to the problems as I have been sending messages to him to establish a record of the issues.

(b) [redacted] can pay for the new installation of all new equipment that we know and trust who we are dealing with. That price tag is going to be from $1800- 2000.

(c) Since his transaction was over $500.00 there would be legal grounds for charges and attorney fees.

Business

Response:

We have been providing home security services for [redacted] and [redacted] for years. During these years, we have upgraded their security equipment as well as their monitoring services and features, for little to no charge. As with anything, technology changes and new features become available to both us as security company and to the customer. Their most recent upgrade was from standard land-line monitoring to [redacted] features including remote access. Yes, there was an increase in monitoring for these features and this is standard in the security industry. We have always treated [redacted] fair and have gone above and beyond. I hope she has that same customer service with her next provider. For her to suggest that we have been taking her money and she has not been monitored is slander. I have record upon record of her security system monitoring without fail. As for low battery notifications, that is something that is programmed as a yes or no to have the feature notification.

At the last service call, [redacted] asked [redacted] if he could install a camera system at her home. He told her that we do not install camera systems any longer but he could refer her to someone that can. He did tell her camera installs can be very pricy. She went on to say that she was fearful for her life because of the active law suit she had against big wigs at the Federal Government. She said she could not afford to purchase an expensive camera system and pleaded with him to help her out because of her current financial difficulty. She agreed to pay him $1200 to install a system to include: 4 cameras, 1 DVR, power supply, wire and anything else needed. He told her, he would be installing the cameras and the dvr viewing only and that in order to view remotely, she would have to ask her internet provider. For her to say that she was promised $300+ dollar cameras is completely ludicrous. We purchased the best equipment we could for the amount of money she could afford. The cameras were purchased from a company in Texas (which should be none of her concern as we purchase equipment from several different manufactures) and the DVR, [redacted] was purchased from [redacted] in Richmond. [redacted] did not lie to her about where anything was coming from. A normal job with $ 900 in equipment would run a customer anywhere between $1800-2500 in installation. He agreed to do this job, only as a favor for a long time customer at a bad place. The total equipment was (please see invoices) [redacted] $474.19 and [redacted] in TX was $366.16 (we ordered any extra camera in case one wasnt working) misc. adapters and item needed for install $34.95, $150 for tech aid for install. Total Job Cost: $1025.30 [redacted] did that whole job for her for $174.70 his labor.

When asked was she owed him after install he said nothing but joked that she could pay him if she wanted. It was never his intention to charge her anything else, he did this as a favor, not to make money off her. As with her reference to the trash man and the glitch in her camera, we cannot and do not guarantee such issues. Even the most advanced camera system in the world have glitches from time to time. I am not sure what her complaint is. The only complaint the she has to be valid is that it did take some time to be installed. [redacted] suffered an injury to his back and was not able to go up and down a ladder and he was in communication with her regularly. She could have asked for her money back then, before installation. She cannot ask someone to do a job for $1200 and then complain that the equipment was not $2000 high end equipment. We did the best we could do for this customer.

As far as her comments on [redacted] financial situation which was completely unfounded and can be looked at as slander, she proclaimed that she was going to be quite wealthy after she wins her suit. He only suggested that maybe she would like to get a good return if she ever wanted to invest in our business. This had nothing to do with him personally but was only a business suggestion.

Please see attached invoice from [redacted] and the below pasted in the body from [redacted].

Thanks,

ORD NBR [redacted] ARMOR

SECUIRTY LLC

,

DC ( STAT ) ( P/O

NBR ) ( SHIP VIA ) CTN

TRM TOT-DLR

RM SHP 03/10/14

PICK UP 0

991

474.19

QTY ITM NBR

[redacted] I

N 1 282.99

2 [redacted]

0 17.82

[redacted]

P 0 44.99

[redacted]

1 5.49

[redacted]

STR WHTE I SL

1 70.99

1 [redacted] 6" DIAG

PLIER W/ TAPERED NOSE I P

0 10.22

ORD NBR [redacted] CUST NBR [redacted] ARMOR SECUIRTY LLC ,

DC ( STAT ) ( P/O NBR ) ( SHIP VIA ) CTN TRM TOT-DLR

RM SHP 03/10/14 [redacted] PICK UP [redacted] 474.19

QTY ITM NBR DESC K BIM PC LOT UNIT-PRC

1 [redacted] I N 1 282.99

2 [redacted] P 0 17.82

1 [redacted] P 0 44.99

1 [redacted] GS 1 5.49

1 [redacted] STR WHTE I SL 1 70.99

1 [redacted] 6" DIAG PLIER W/ TAPERED NOSE I P 0 10.22

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the offer made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

[Provide details of why you are not satisfied with this resolution.]

Regards,

As there was no offer to settle this, I can clearly say that a few of their comments were exaggerated, unfounded, and side-stepping the quality of the equipment. First and foremost the equipment malfunction and the stories told to me during the process, combined with the complete malfunction of the cameras, including the verbal onset agreement of getting good quality cameras, is what the issue is. It seems that [redacted] brought about the speculations concerning prices of the cameras and how it came about on his own volition. In one conversation he told me that I had stressed to him of my doomed financial situation, which is just simply not true. On a personal level, yes, I expressed to him that I needed the installation fairly quickly and it took him a long several months to do the job. Why I needed the camera's other than for security is a mute point. Any customer is not going to encourage paying the most for anything in this type of situation. If he was not in the business for installing camera's, I suspect he needed the money and took a chance that I would not call him on it. All he would have had to say was that he did not do that service, long standing customer or not. Thus in purchasing the equipment he evidently did not know what he was doing as far as quality is concerned, going out on a limb here. He claims that he has another partner that does those types of installations and never gave me any cause think he was not capable of handling this type of service. [redacted] had my phone number at all times and if he was concerned that the cameras and prices he was getting may not fit the bill, he could have called me and let me know, before he spent the money as any good business person would have done. As one of his long standing customers you would think he would let me know what was available and we could have gone from there. Instead, he just got the cheapeast he could. No one would expect him to purchase the cameras with his own money, as a matter of fact he stated to me on the phone, when the altercation started and I told him then that I did not expect him to do that. He had actually called me and said he had spent all the money in Richmond on equipment,which should have been beyond superb equipment. When the altercation started he told me those cameras cost $75.00. Those price listings of the equipment could very well be for something other than what I was given. I only have the proof that the cameras are cheap and not working properly. Since his remarks kept

getting more and more suspicious, and, why would I ask him if I owed him any more money if I would have known that the whole package was $1200.00. I am glad that he admitted I had asked him that. His cost of the equipment, I do not believe, combined with the labor and "customer value" factors is making any sense. If one was to view these camera qualities, that is where the proof is in the poor equipment. It speaks for itself. I also not believe that [redacted] has focused on the fact that others in the industry quickly pick up on the quality of these cameras and installation. My trust was in [redacted] to provide an acceptable product, not something he installed what he thought would get him by and not corresponding with me on his purchases and pricing.

I still stay standing for either of the 3 options for settlement.

Again, let me express to you my appreciation in assisting me with this matter. Something I was considering was going back to one/more of the companies in which there was a problem with [redacted] switching us over to his security. They were not happy. I would be wondering if they may have some insight on his practices. I will wait to see how this comes out. There is a trail that has been left. The bottom line is that [redacted] needs to clear up this problem because I feel that he has not been up front in this entire matter to include the shoddy equipment. I am only stating the facts as they have unraveled.

We've had Vector/Armor 7 alarm service for a year and have been pleased with the level of protection provided to our residence. Initial installation was quick and professional. A recent water issue in the house caused a sensor malfunction and the owner responded in person to replace the damaged equipment in a timely manner at no cost to us.