1-800-Med-Alert
Is This Your Business?Author: Kaitlyn Short
1-800-Med-Alert values simplicity and has an easy to use system with 24/7 monitoring. Their website mentions that they have been in the business of protecting seniors for over 25 years.
Top Ranked Companies
The Good
- Emergency Contact Options
- Help Button Range
- Base Unit Purchase Options
Emergency Contact Options
1-800-Med-Alert has one of the best emergency contact options in the industry. A client can select up to 8 contacts, indicate which one has a key to the house, and choose the hospital where they wish to stay. In order to reduce the cost of an ambulance, a client can choose to select contacting family members before summoning an ambulance.
Help Button Range
1-800-Med-Alert offers a great range with the help button. Even though the help button doesn't have the best range on the market, 400 feet is more than enough for a person who wants to move in and about their home. The button is also waterproof, meaning that the client can use it in the shower or outside the home.
Another thing great about 1-800-Med-Alert is the affordable extra help button for couples and families. The help button is affordable and only costs an extra $3.49/month.
Base Unit Purchase Options
The customer has the option to purchase the base unit outright, which can lower monthly fees. Not quite sure how this affects the warranty on the product, but for a user who plans on having their system for a while- it provides cost savings.
The Bad
- Additional Fees
- Website
- Lack of Mobility
Additional Fees
The automatic monitoring service adds an additional cost of $8.99 per month. Many of the products and services reviewed for personal alert systems involved free automatic updates. If a person chooses not to purchase the monitoring service for the base unit, they might not notice something wrong with the system. Therefore, if a system failed, the system might not work in an emergency.
Website
The website for 1-800-Med-Alert has not been updated since 2012. Terms of services might have changed since then, as well as other warranty stipulations. Terms of services are not included on the website.
Lack of Mobility
Another concern about this company was the lack of mobility. Even though the help button can travel 400 feet away from the base unit, there are not many options for leaving the house, taking an extended vacation, or getting away for a weekend. Cellular and GPS services would make 1-800-Med-Alert's product more viable.
The Bottom Line
It is difficult to recommend 1-800-Med-Alert, due to the lack of information on their service. It was even difficult to find the information about their UI licensure for their monitoring center. There also is no way of knowing about complaints or pending government actions against 1-800-Med-Alert. In the end, 1-800-Med-Alert comes highly recommended because they have one of the best customer support platforms for reaching emergency contacts. Also, clients have the ability to pick which hospital they would like to go to in case of an emergency.
