Alarm Monitoring Services Reviews

Alarm Monitoring Services, Inc. and Cencom, Inc. run a national scam out of Washington state.While their prices initially seem cheap compared to other security services, they make it nearly impossible to cancel the service. They will send you fake invoices that must be paid before you are allowed to cancel. When you protest, the companies retroactively raise the monthly rate from $10 - $20 /month to $250 / month for the previous 12 to 24 months! They cite the “terms and conditions” fine print for authority to do so and threaten you with ruining your credit rating if you do not pay the additional $2,500 to $5,000 in fake billings. Customer service is most unprofessional. The companies have a “F” grade from the BBB for good reason. Run away while you still can.

Stay away from this company and CenCom, Inc in Kirkland, Washington. I was a customer for 13 years due to their low monthly rates. While their monitoring services worked well, their invoicing and accounting systems are a total mess! (I am an accountant myself and have worked with hundreds of companies.) They try to use Quickbooks for invoicing by email which works very poorly and full of errors. It is not unusual to get 2-3 invoices from them in a week for an annual renewal, all with different charges. In the Spring of 2021, their online sign up system was down for 4 full days. When I finally got it to work, they charged my credit card twice for the same annual amount. When I talked to one of their managers, Ben P, he refused to correct the problem and was rude. Then the company tried to charge me $25 for my bank reversing the duplicate charge. Every month after that, they added another $25 for the unpaid fee. Ridiculous! Customer issues are not dealt with professionally nor does the company take any responsibility for errors or problems. Cancellation is also impossible. They make you go through 10+ pages of questions online and then require you to call them for a 4 digit code to input before submission. First they try to get you to renew by offering you a price lower than they invoiced you for. If that does not work, they start to harass you claiming you have unpaid fees or leased equipment that must be returned first. At one point, they claimed I had leased equipment when I bought and installed my own security system in the beginning. Their representative admitted to me that their accounting system was a nightmare but she could not do anything about it. Neither of these companies should be in business based on their fraudulent business practices and poor customer service. Go elsewhere.

This all started when they quadrupled my monthly rates. Service seemed legit but try and cancel? What a joke. Extra hoops and costs clearly meant to discourage progress in their cancellation "process". Sent back the digital diverter box they probably got from China for $1 and five months later, another bill, $35 for refurbishment. Payment was due on the same day the bill was sent! Lots of other horror stories out there running $1,000 plus because of not exactly complying with their deceptive cancellation process and contract. The last invoice came with a copy of section 15 of the original agreement I apparently agreed to. If you need to quote your fine print to the consumer to collect $35 you are obviously not a company worth doing business with. CenCom in Kirkland is the company behind Alarm Monitoring Services. An F on BBB.

DO NOT USE THIS BUNCH OF CROOKS! I prepaid for a 5 year monitoring service using all my own equipment. I cancelled after 4 years. Sometime later, they began billing me $200 plus 6 - $10/month late fee for "NON_RETURNED LEASED ITEM" I never had the item in question and responded to them several times via email. Eventually, I contacted them and spoke to a "Phil" who told me their records were screwed up. (No surprise there!) Phil also told me how long they had been in business and that I was rude because I wanted an email verifying their error and an apology from his manager. He then abruptly hung up on me. From looking at he other reviews here, their SCAM operation is no surprise and I hope anyone considering using them seriously consider going elsewhere. Sadly, I don't remember what my upfront charge was for their "service" .

SCAM! The equipment they sent never worked. Wasted hours on the phone with their "tech support" trying to get it to work. It all came down to them telling me to hire a local company to fix it because they are incompetent. Trying to get a refund is mission impossible. They make you jump through hoops with 10 different forms on 20 different websites . After you do that and wait for months to get a response they basically tell you they can't refund anything because they have to take out the tech support fee, shipping fee, handling fee and a whole bunch of other "fees". Long story short you will never see your money again. Also, you will most likely get yelled at and they will hung up on you every time you ask a question. SCAM SCAM SCAM

Misleading sales, overcharging for services, difficulty receiving credits and canceling services, threats in sending me to collections. In October of 2017 Ben at Alarm Monitoring Services indicated he could monitor my Brinks alarm system. After I prepaid $5.95 for 12 months and $35 registration fee they would send me a free digital diverter to which I “only had to pay $18.95 for shipping and handling”. After installation and setup, my alarm panel sent out a signal out every two days and with no response it gave me a trouble signal and beeped every couple minutes requiring me to reset my alarm system every two days. About this time, they also increased my monthly charge by $2/month for “log test”. I tried to work with their “engineering department” for about 6 months to rectify the situation but to no avail. In October of 2018, after my one-year contract, I canceled services only to be charged the “new monthly rate” the next month because “they did not receive proper notification of cancellation” (a drawn out process of starting a submissions on a specific website, then calling a number with information about your system, then inputting a code back into the website, and finely receiving a confirmation.) After I went through this cancellation process again and receiving confirmation, I forwarded it to their billing department to confirm I would not receive any further billings. They confirmed I would not be receiving any further billings then they send me a bill for “refurbishment” of the “free” equipment I returned. When I disputed the charge, they tacked on $25 for “E-A-C-H charge back”, $25 for “our accounting department to process” and then $500 “minimum collection fee as per contract.” This is a really dishonest business!

SCAM ALERT!!! This company, Alarm Monitoring Services (AMS), is not legitimate!!! I paid them up front for a year's worth of service, plus insurance and other fees to ensure that they could provide me service. They never gave me a single second of service before telling me they couldn't takeover my alarm monitoring unless I paid them an additional $150 for them to "try." That had SCAM written all over it so I asked them to please refund my money. I waited 2 weeks with no refund or communication from them before I disputed the charges on my credit card. Then they had the nerve to send me to some second rate collection service for seven (7) times my original bill with absolutely no explanation for the extra charges. Even the Collection Agency, Fidelity Information Corp. dba Fidelity Capitol Holdings, Inc. has an F-Rating, which means they take on fraudulent “fake” debts for any unscrupulous company who pays them to harass innocent consumers. What a joke, save your money, don't get scammed by these losers who have to steal and lie to kick it.

The worst company I have done business with. I cancelled my service with them because they were charging me for services I did not order or use. I paid for a full year of service, and cancelled after less than 4 months. The money I paid for the full year was not enough to cover 4 months of service. The free equipment they advertise online is not free. In order for you to cancel your service, you have to agree for them to take $199.95 from your payment method in file, this will be only refunded after they received the "free equipment." If you try to explain to them that was not what you signed for, then they become angry, and tell you there is nothing you can do about it. If you insist, they will hang up on you.

This company goes by American Digital Monitoring, Virtualarm, and Cencom. Stay away from this company. They are very dishonest and charge you for everything. If your customer has more than three calls in a month, they start charging you for every call. They also don't call on any cancel alarms. There are TONS of issues with this company. I tested the service with 300 accounts, can't wait to get back off these guys.

Run fast, run far, and stay away from this company. Nothing but trouble. No calls on alarm activation several times. Don't answer their phones when you call them to report alarms or for customer service. Hidden fees, rate hikes, faulty equipment, impossible to cancel, questionable billing practices. Refurbish fees for 30 day old equipment in pristine condition that I paid for and returned, that they say I needed to keep the service. I complained to attorney general in two states and the company didn't respond to their requests.

Do Not Use! I have horrible cell service in my apartment. When I called and had to keep moving, I got annoyed. Not with him. He hung up on me. I called back and he said he didn't want my business because I was rude and high stung and hung up on me again. I called back, he hung up. I called corporate office, explained situation, she laughed, threw me on hold. Last person told me they didn't want my business and said they were blocking my number. I asked if this was a scam and he hung up on me.

I called this company to take over my existing fire alarm service which they told me they were able to do. They asked me to log on to their website and got really angry when I questioned their fee that is on the website since they had just quoted me a higher price that I had to pay up 6 months in advance. The guy hung up on me and told me to find another company before I had a chance. Very unprofessional and rude. This cannot be a legitimate honest company. Stay away.

After one year they jack up the prices. They make it very hard to easily cancel, and then charge $35 to refurbish the transmitter- nothing about this fee is on the invoice. They won't credit your CC account until the transmitter is returned

same as all the other reviews, wish i had looked here first. equipment was never able to hook up to my system. I was told to get a new alarm system and then they could monitor it..Seriously, go buy an entire new unit so i could hook up to this cheap equipment? anything is better. i set up a great ring system

literally thieves!!! the reviews and ratings here have to be fake! !they never tell you that it is a teaser rate!!! and jumps to the most expensive rate after that! and force you to jump through hoops to cancel service, charge exorbitant cancellation fees, and make you send back the equipment at your expense...

Canceling service is impossible and they sent $500 collection fees and other $400 fees for ridiculous fees they never sent it the first place. Do NOT use this company!

I tried to speak with them on the phone and as soon as the questions got hard, hey hung up on me saying they did not want my business. Stay Far away!

They are horrible no communication. Steal money from you. Avoid at all cost.