It was the 4th of July and I had to get up real early for work, when I got to the bathroom I found my mom lying on the floor. She just had a stroke and was unconscious but could see that she was still breathing. I ran over to the security panel and pushed the emergency code and nothing happened. I have the Pinnacle phone number written right on the unit, so I grab my phone and call the number. The first 2 times I tried the line was busy. On the third call somebody answered and as I desperately told her everything, she calmly said, let me give you an 800 toll free number to call. I couldn't believe it. I went back to check on my mom and she was not breathing. I started screaming at my phone telling her that I need help now, but then realized that she hung up on me. I then called 911.By the time they got here she was already dead. I reacted to the whole situation with the confidence that Pinnacle would be there in an emergency. What they did should be criminal.
I should have, and meant to cancel their services, but depression was taking its toll on me.
I just had another incident happened two weeks ago where I had a small kitchen fire and the alarm went off. I put the fire out real quick and went to the key pad and pushed the emergency number to cancel the alarm and again nothing happened. So I immediately call the number on the front panel and again it was busy. And again, and again. Finally on the fourth call somebody answered, I told them that I needed the alarm turned off first of all because they mounted it right above the security panel and I could not hear anything they were saying. It took a couple of minutes to finally get them to understand my password and everything else they were asking, but then again it was too late. I could hear the sirens pulling up outside. When the fire dept. Showed up, they had to do their job. But in the end, I had a huge hole knocked out of my kitchen wall exposing my house to 9 degree weather that night. I closed up the hole best I could but my tank less water heater was spraying out water by morning.
All this could have been avoided if they would just answer the damn phone. A security company should not have 9 to 5 hours and forward you to an answering service after hours.
Here is the irony of it all, my mom switched over from Monitronics a couple of years ago. I was listening to the representative do his sales pitch and noticed that they had a list of Monitronics customers that they were underselling. When I mentioned that was a bad business ethic, he just laughed and said it works. Little did my mom know that she was signing her own death warrant. On top of that, I just called Pinnacle to cancel, and they said it would cost me, (some ridiculous amount), because what she signed was a 42 month contract.
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