After reading a few reports here, I think I can clarify the confusion about whether or not Pinnacle has a parent company. Apparently, they do not. But the salesmen lie about that when they come to your door.
My experience was similar to the other complainant here — a Pinnacle salesman came to my door and told me that my current company's (Monitronics) equipment was no longer being dispatched to the police. Some kind of analog vs. Digital issue. The salesman said that he was authorized by Monitronics to upgrade my equipment, and they had given him all the relevant information. It seemed plausible, since he had all the information about my home and my system, right there on his clipboard.
To be honest, it did seem to me like he wasn't being entirely honest — I felt like you do when you're being slammed by a phone company. But the guy was going to wire a couple extra windows for free, the install was free, and our monitoring was going to be a few bucks cheaper. So we said, "What the heck? Let's go for it."
Since that time. We've had two alarms. (In the summertime, I'm sometimes impatient to open a window and forget to turn the alarm off first!) In both instances, THERE WAS NO RESPONSE FROM PINNACLE. I'd wait by the panel, for a very long time, expecting someone to come over the speaker and ask for my password (like Monitronics did). Nothing would happen, but my phone would still say "line in use." After twenty minutes or so, I would pick up my phone and discover that it was still ringing.
There was an alarm in my home, my panel called in to the monitoring people, and there was no one home. This happened twice.
Pinnacle's response? They told me they don't have a live person come over the panel if I enter my passcode after the alarm is sounded. Monitronics always connected a live person, in case I'd been forced by an intruder to enter my code or press the disarm button on the remote, and gave me a special password to tell the dispatcher what was happening.in any case, why was my panel calling in and getting no response? It just rang and rang and rang. What will happen when there's a real alarm?
We have a four year contract with this company, and I do not feel safe.
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