Cancellation of monitoring

@davey_d​ 

Account setting changes are a highly sensitive topic given that they can impact your level of protection, and it’s not difficult to imagine a situation where this type of request may be made under duress

I'll say it again, this is dumb and poorly thought out at best. If I, under duress or not, have access to the mobile app I can literally disable notifications. I can remove every single sensor. I can change payment information so you all turn off the service. There are numerous ways in which having access to the mobile app already gives someone the ability to effectively disable their service completely.

It's 2023 now and your customers (and honestly, everyone else) expects to be able to handle these sorts of things (account changes and cancellations) via a mobile app or website. Having to pick up the phone and call someone, and face the inevitable attempt to retain the customer somehow, feels archaic and a bit shady. Even without there being a legal requirement to add this functionality there's plenty of good reason to add this functionality.

I'm replying publicly instead of sending a direct message because there's no reason not to have this conversation where everyone can see it. It's been almost 8 months and there's been no concrete response to the very simple question, does SimpliSafe intend to comply with CA and Federal law regarding this requirement or not? If not, why not? If so, what year/decade can we hope to have this change implemented?

@davey_d​ 

"If you are looking to cancel your subscription, you can always call our customer service team at 1-888-783-8441."

Actually, this is also not true. You can't ALWAYS call and cancel. You can cancel during designated business hours that are convenient for Simplisafe and not Simplisafe customers.

I was on the fence before, but after seeing how difficult it is to cancel - I agree - this is some shady business practices being masked as "customer's security first". Every other high security company in existence has managed multi-level identify verification online - except Simplisafe. So either SimpliSafe's tech and security is outdated or worse - their messaging is profit focused not customer focused. 

I'll be sure to call Monday morning during business hours to cancel my $30/month plan -- and report to the FTC. 

@rgg​  thanks for sharing. I just submitted the form. 

Hello @worthing , thank you for calling this out. I'm working with our higher-level teams, so I can make sure that I have the most accurate answer for you.

@worthing​ While it is true I a am a very loyal SS customer, if you search my posts in the past, I do, without hesitation, call Simplisafe out for when I feel service, products, or a customer experience is not what I would consider satisfactory. Given my experience with the likes of an ADT, where I would say the California law was initiated for, the process I described in my original post was meant to say "not burdensome", and I gave a personal example and what their current policy is. Yes, I was definitely serious.  BTW, the links you provided were very informative and were clear what the points of the law are.

@davey_d​ 

Thanks so much! Government regulations aside, it's 2022 and y'all are long overdue to add this functionality. I know millennials who would rather text the fire department and sit in a fire and wait to be texted back than have to call someone. :P 

@captain11​ 

Ah, I think I get it now. I thought you were literally making the argument that SimpliSafe could ignore state and federal law because they have a policy that runs contrary to the laws which is why I was so astonished.

@davey_d​ So have your higher ups given an answer yet? I'm about to be filing an FTC complaint myself since you guys won't let me cancel.

Nimbleness is as good a word as any for a company to be able to respond to customer, competition, economic or legal considerations. Again strongly recommend Simplisafe reach out to other companies outside their industry to exchange ideas, practices, poliices, processes etc. Benchmarking is a method that can improve all of the organizations involved.  My former emplyer, while in the medical device industry, has many similarities with Simplisafe, and would be an ideal candidate to benchmark with.

Now back to that elongated "safari search"of an answer.....

@davey_d​ 

Thanks and I'm sorry to keep beating you up but I hope you can understand my frustration when topics (and not just this one but the many others waiting for a proper, informative, useful response) go unanswered for forever. I get that you're the middle man for most of these questions/issues and not the person able to address or fix them and I genuinely appreciate your patience and efforts.

Also, still available for part time work to shape up y'alls knowledge base (fix current entries that need it, expand the amount of content greatly, etc.) and work with the community. I'm champing at the bit man, let me at it. :)

@cybergeistmrw​ You, and everyone else, should report this to the FTC. It will certainly get the attention of the higher-ups.

@rgg​ Thank you! This should be at the top. I am a California resident, so I'll be submitting that and the FTC form. 

Hi @worthing​, 

The answer has not changed since our last Official Response in this thread. At this time, users still need to call into our customer service team to downgrade or cancel their monitoring plan.

@emily_s​ 

I take your response to mean 1 of 2 things:

- SImpliSafe disagrees without interpretation of the CA law and therefore doesn't believe they are required to make the change

- SimpliSafe does agree with our interpretation of the CA law and has simply decided they're not going to be compliant

Can you please let us know which position your legal department has chosen to take?

@erinjessica07​ I'm sorry to hear about your experience when calling to cancel your monitoring subscription. By default, all SimpliSafe products are covered under a one-year limited warranty. When subscribed to the Fast Protect™ monitoring plan, one of the features is the lifetime warranty that covers your devices for as long as you are subscribed. You can learn more here.

@erinjessica07​ While I will be the first one to say sometimes it feels like Simplisafe MarCom can't chew gum and walk at the same time, I will not say anything "shady" is going on here. For years (at least 2012 when I started with SS) their policy was a 3 year warranty on all products. They announced on the website, and in an email that I got, that last year they were changing to the current policy of 1 year or for life if you had the Total Interactive Plan, or whatever it was called that month. (Part of the communication comment I stated earlier.)  

Word of advice to SS: follow KISS for your and your customer benefit as you did formerly when smaller. An example: "FastProtect Monitoring is less than a dollar per day"  Drop the ADT like garbage and just say it's 27.99 per month, and if you prepay a year, you get two months at no charge and then will be billed the annual fee -- that is, if that's still available.

 Another suggestion: ask a group of customers before you come up with new programs, features etc.   You wll be surprised how beneficial it will be.

Finally, I personally like the current policy, as it prevents unauthorized parties from cancelling my service. And if you want to see what really hard ways to cancel is like, try ADT. Ugh.

@captain11​ Now it's $29.99 per month.  (Or $30 per month in non-marketing-weasel-speak. Or "just one dollar per day!" in weasel-speak.)

@worthing As a security company, SimpliSafe's procedures put the safety of our customers above all else. As we have said before, we purposely do not speak on legal matters on the Community, but please know that our teams are always evaluating our processes with our customers in mind.​

we purposely do not speak on legal matters on the Community

OK, where can we go to discuss them? I'm happy to set up a conference call or a Teams/Webex/Zoom meeting. I'm totally serious here.

It is very disappointing that Simplisafe has gone the "customer retention" route with an entire dept to have a "discussion" on cancelling monitoring. The likes of ADT, Comcast, Sirius Radio and, locally, the Chicago Tribune go through giving customers an extremely hard time before they finally make their cancellations "complete".

Again, If I call in, give the agent on the line my safe word and then say "cancel", repeat it back to me. Once they say yes and I am on a recorded line, I say thanks and hang up. Period. Yes, I have tangled with ADT, the worse, who has a contract you need to do your homework on, at Sirius radio who you can't contact for hours etc.

At least SS doesn't have a contract and you can reach a human agent. But SS, still disappointing.