Frozen Base Station; Then lost all devices

This is a two part issue. Here's a TL;DR... I am extremely frustrated with SS and their ability to handle the problem. At no point was there an ability to have the issue escalated to engineering, and the only resolution I was given was fix it yourself, here's two free months of service. None of this is acceptable. The acceptable resolution would be to have your own tech support have the tools to remedy the situation, as well as being able to directly report to engineering to get this issue discussed for potential software debugging. Now on to the actual scenario and problem.

On Friday as my wife and I were leaving town for the first time since the covid-19 pandemic, our house sitter calls us to let us know that the security system will not disarm. No problem I though, that's why I pay for the ability to use the app and remotely arm/disarm our system, as well as a camera to visually verify it was only her present in the house. However, none of the systems would respond. The app would still notify me when motion was detected at a camera, and the app believed the base station to be in away mode, yet no effort to put the system into off mode was available, either at the keypad or the app. I call technical support. The man is extremely unhelpful, essentially telling me there is nothing he can do to reset the system, and the only way to turn off the base station for a reset is to pull a battery behind a plate. That's fine, but my house sitter is a very nontechnical elderly woman. Could you please point me to a YouTube video to help? There's nothing. He tries to tell me to just search for one myself, and attempts to point me to a video, but the contents of said video were literally a slide show of the instructions, which have no photographs btw, that can be found on the website. Fine, the house sitter did not plan to leave the home due to Covid, and is fine without having a security system while at our residence. After walking her through the process myself over the phone, she has the battery removed, we tried reconnecting the base station the keypad, to no avail, and she left the base station un-powered during her stay.

Upon returning home today, I worked on reconnecting the base station to the keypad. I pulled a battery from the keypad, re-powered the base station, then re-powered the keypad. Success! The systems repaired, and the system would arm and disarm correctly. Only oddly, when re-powering the keypad which was only off for a matter of 2-3 seconds, it requested me to reconnect to wifi as if it were a new system. I then checked the app, and sure enough the whole system has reset fully; there was only a single device, the keypad, attached to the system! Every single entry sensor, alarm siren, keyfob, and motion sensor was missing from the devices list. I call technical support again, getting halfway through explaining the issue, when I am disconnected from the call. They call back, but I hear no audio from the SS technical support side. They call again, nothing. I recall support, I re explain the issue for a second time, and disconnected yet again. They call back, again no audio. Call again, no audio. I call customer support, FOR A THIRD TIME, and get a technical support person with an extremely loud fan blasting in the background. I understand working from home has put people in a new setting, but come one people. Please have an audio check before you begin working. This time, I did not get disconnected. However, my efforts were useless. My worst fear had come true; technical support had no clue why my system had completely disconnected, and they had no way of re-adding my devices, even though they had every single serial number sitting in front of them. The only thing I could do was walk through my house and manually add each device back to the system, as well as renaming them so I know which sensor is which. When I asked if they can escalate the issue to engineering/ software dev team to prevent other customers from having the same issue since the tech support folks seem to have never had this issue occur before, I am told that they have no method of contacting them, and only their bosses boss is able to escalate, if they deem necessary. I'm sorry, but why are the boots on the ground so far removed from the folks who are able to make permanent changes? This entire system is convoluted and bloated with management, all while not providing services that are actually useful.

In the end, I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. Tech support never provided me any information that ended up being useful. They were not able to remedy the issue on a system that is most crucially needed when you are away from the system. The only remedy is for you to be present. What would happen should I be away on travel without a house sitter for extended time? Does tech support seriously have no way of connecting to the station? Why is there no way to ensure my heartache is not experienced by other users by having the people who maintain the software become aware of a glaring software issue, either by some sort of hardware malfunction or a software update problem? How am I able to leave home again, confident that my security system will respond correctly, and not be stuck in away mode without being able to be tripped? I have been given 2 months of free service for the troubles and was encouraged to reach out here. But if I am not able to find a reasonable resolution to my strife, I may just have to take my business elsewhere...