Missouri Homeowner Says ADT Alarm System Failed Her Four Times

When homeowners pay for and install an alarm system, they expect it to work. That wasn’t the experience of an Ozarks, Missouri woman, who paid thousands of dollars for a well-known home security system from ADT that failed to work at least four times.

According to Lynn, who asked that her last name not be used, her security alarm went off multiple times in the past several years, yet when it did, ADT never called — and the police never came. “What if it was a murder or rapist? We would have been toast,” said Lynn.

“One of our children… had breached the security system. Our house is long. We went out the front door. We could not hear the alarm go off. So we are out on the front porch having our cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. We went back in minutes later and realizing as we got closer to the kitchen, the alarm was going off,” she recounted. Since the alarm had gone off for several minutes before getting turned out, they assumed a police car would be there any minute.

Yet the police never came, and ADT never called. During another instance, she got an automated phone call, which Lynn felt would have been useless in the case of a real intruder. “If a murder or rapist is going to come into the home — before he rapes me, I need to say can you hold on just a second?” Lynn said, remembering how the call asked her to press two if she felt that her life was in jeopardy.

ADT, for its part, says that this is the procedure in place when a customer disarms the system before the signal is actually transmitted, which typically happens when someone sets off the alarm by accident. “In the event a system is triggered at any point and is not disarmed, ADT will attempt to call the homeowner, and if no response if received, will dispatch the authorities,” their official statement reads.

For some consumers, that might not be comforting enough. Lynn, for her part, is now moving to a new home, and she doesn’t plan to install ADT.

“When you get a home or business security system installed, it is always a good idea to give it a couple of scenario based tests to ensure you are getting the correct level of security,” says Uri Schick, Owner of GES Security. “By setting of the alarm on purpose to make sure procedures of the monitoring company you have chosen are followed to your standards, you can rest easy with peace of mind.”