Guard O Matic

Guard O Matic services our alarm system that was installed during the building process. We’ve only been in our house for 11 months. I called Guard O Matic and had them come out for a motion sensor that was going off. We weren’t sure if it was our dog was setting it off or not. I explained this to the gal that answered the phone and to the technician prior to coming out. They sent the technician out the very next day. The technician determined that our dog was in fact setting it off. I later got a call stating we have a past due balance of $ 80 for this call. I was never once told that there would be a charge for this call, not by the gal that answered the phone nor the technician. In my mind this was covered under the new build warranty as every other vendor has been. I never thought to ask if there was a charge and they never told me there was going to be. When the technician was done he asked me to sign his paperwork saying the job was complete. Again, never mentioned anything about a service call fee. When I got the call stating I had a past due balance I looked at the paperwork and saw that there was a charge on there that I signed and agreed to without knowing. My bad for signing and not reading it. Again in my mind there was no question as to a charge or not being the house wasn’t a year old and everything should be covered top to bottom. I then called and spoke to the Manager, Kim, who hasn’t been very helpful. So I asked to speak to the owner and left 2 messages for him over a matter of 4 days. I just got a call from Kim saying that the owner doesn’t call the customers and he doesn’t do day to day business. Again, as a customer I would expect for the owner to care enough about his customers and the way his business is being ran to at least call them back after leaving 2 messages. I am very upset about this situation. Guard O Matic should’ve informed me that there might be a charge prior to sending the technician out. It is bad business practice to send out a technician to do the work then tell the customer oh by the way you now owe us money. I wanted to let everyone know how this business operates and apparently the owner doesn’t care about how it’s ran.

We had been loyal customers of Guard o Matic for 10 years when we sold our house and moved into a rental for one year. As loyal customers of Guard O Matic, we had them monitor our rental for our 1 year lease. We did not notice the salesman had written the contract for 36 months. Our fault, we know. When we cancelled our service because our lease is up and we are moving, we were told, after 11 years of being a loyal customer, that we would be sent to Collection. Explaining we would not knowingly sign a 3 year contract for a 1 year lease did not matter to Guard O Matic. They are completely unreasonable. Very bad customer service. And to make matters worse, if your alarm is triggered because of a break-​in, they wait a full minute before calling to check on your safety. A lot can happen in a minute. Steer clear of the bad, bad company.

Unfortunately, we have called Guard-​O-​Matic several times to fix their system here at our home in Phoenix. They are friendly, but completely incompetent. They came out and totally replaced our older system with new sensors, batteries, control pads and main box. Several hundred dollars later for the new equipment and nothing works. All they can say is they don’t know why. Perhaps we should buy more equipment to see if that does anything. How is that responsive or accepting of responsibility to due diligence for your customer and your customer’s personal safety? Hardly. Sad. Pathetic actually.