We want to start off by saying we love Verizon Fios. We have our cable and internet through them and don't plan on switching anytime soon.
A few months ago when we went into a Verizon store we noticed their new Home Monitoring System, $89.99 for the starter kit then $9.99 a month after that. With the starter kit you get a gateway device (which is basically a router), an indoor camera, and an indoor light module. There are also many add-ons you can get. We got the deadbolt keypad lock for $159.99. The thing that got us was that we didn't have to pay anything then, they could spread out the payments for the next three months of our Verizon bill. If we had to pay right then we wouldn't have done it. We thought this would be a cheaper security system, no contracts and we do all the monitoring.
This sounds way more awesome then it is, let's not waste any time and get to why we say such things. We are very handy and tech savvy people, Cody would even go so far as to call himself a handy man. So the physical installation was not a problem (Cody did most of it, lol) but when we got to the tech set up the website wasn't running right and we had to call the tech support team three different times. 2 out of 3 where helpful but one of them Cody wanted to smack them through the phone. No one is a fan of rude tech support people. Just because you know what you are doing doesn't mean that everyone does, especially when your website is not working correctly.
Anyway lets go for its function. It works but not the way it was explained to us. We were told that if the motion detector camera went off we would be sent a picture text message of what set it off. That is not the case. The couple times it was set off by our dog we didn't receive a picture of him jumping around being awesome and doing awesome things just a text to a link. The link takes you to the website where you have to sign in and there is still no picture just a message saying that the motion sensor was set off at this time, on this date. They have a smart phone app, which is great for monitoring. Downside, you can only have one user monitoring on the app at a time. So it's kind of a pain to try to sign in and not be able to. Then you text the the other person to ask if they are on, and sometimes no one was on but it wouldn't let you in. We got the Home Monitoring System to take some stress off Cody's mind but it just added more to it.
All this being said we sent it back. We're not willing to pay for something that only works 50% of the time. This could be a great product but right now we feel that Verizon Home Monitoring is not worth the trouble. We have been trying to get our money back and our bill straightened out for the last 4 months. As of now we are still waiting for the refund, we haven't payed it but its still on the bill. They say its coming so we'll see what happens.
This product was not for our family, but it might work for someone else's, that up for you to decide. This has been our honest opinion.
