Oct 11, 2014
Called yesterday (wife just told me today).
863-552-3648 with a Caller ID of "Florida". (the number is not a valid number, meaning they are spoofing it and that is also illegal).
The main names they use are "Safe Home Security" (55 Sebethe Dr, Ste 201, Cromwell, CT 06416), a.k.a. "Safe Guard America" (7011 Grand National Drive, Suite 100 Orlando, FL 32819). The last could be where the calls are coming from...cheap labor.
"Safe Home Security" appears to be a dealer for sales and installation, not the actual monitoring company. They can only be reached via e-mail or snail mail. There is a link on their website to Massbuy (www.massbuy.com) but it is a broken link. Most of the complaints about "Safe Home Security" are about the impossibility of cancelling the service and being stuck with bad hardware that costs hundreds of dollars to replace at your expense.
An affiliate is "Rapid Response", 400 West Division Street, Syracuse, NY 13204). Hmmm. An awful lot of scam calls come out of the area.
The other is "Monitronics" (PO Box 814530, Dallas, TX 75381-4530). This appears to be the company that actually does the monitoring. Their systems are installed and serviced by "Authorized Dealers". But there is no way to get a list of these authorized dealers. In fact, the company link to "Authorized Dealers" goes nowhere. Consumeraffairs (Consumeraffairs.com) shows that 74% of the company ratings are 2 or 1 stars out of 5 (Note: The default is 1 star. There is no way to give 0 or a negative number of stars.) More telling is that the "glowing" reviews (6% with 5 stars) all seem to be from people who signed up within the last week or 2 and could not possibly rate the company properly, and these few reviews seem to be timed to the recent flurry of telemarketing calls. The BBB has 1644 complaints over the last 12 months (1001 are about product or service).
I can't help but wonder if all of these calls, from many numbers, aren't somehow related to the (probable) scam being run by entrepreneur Mike Melton and SecurityAlarmNow.com on TV (1-888-292-4750). Illegal telemarketing calls are a standard in the telemarketer/entrepreneur toolbox.
Although apparently headquartered in AZ, he has a "presence" in Florida.
He's touting home security systems in TV ads designed to look like professional, third-party interviews. The ads always run during either the noon or evening news which is probably designed to attach a certain amount of credibility to them. He is introduced a an "expert" on home security but a search reveals no background in anything resembling home security. His expertise is in call center management (i.e. telemarketing), sales, and marketing. His runs a telemarketing business involving his Dish Network dealership and ADT Security dealership.
If you are among the first 20 to call (noon, evening, multiple stations, day after day, week after week, month after month) you get a $100 gift card. The cost to sign up for the ADT service is $99. Interestingly enough, ADT doesn't currently charge anything to sign up. Therefore he makes $99 for each sucker. He also neglects to mention that it is his own people who do the installing and who service the system for the first 90-days. There is no mention of the cost of equipment and therein lies the basis of most of the complaints about his company. Apparently he is installing equipment at his own prices, not those of ADT.
SecurityAlarmNow
2150 E. Germann Road Suite 1
Chandler, AZ 85286
Phone: (888) 820-9255
This Business is not BBB Accredited.