725 Messages
Once Again, Your Communication Needs a LOT of Work (Response Time Changes, New Plans)
Hi SimpliSafe,
Recently there have been two changes, big changes IMO, that people have become aware of through interacting with SimpliSafe or the website. These are:
1. The change from a response time of 30 seconds to 2 minutes for phone calls when an alarm is triggered.
2. The addition of 2x new plans (Pro and Pro Plus) and the renaming of Fast Protect (now Core).
We've been discussing the change in response times for a while on the SimpliSafe subreddit. (Which is at https://www.reddit.com/r/simplisafe for those who aren't aware - please come join us!) It's been weeks, I think? I just noticed the change in plans offered tonight in a document that says last updated 8 (now 9, I think) days ago.
No emails. No app pushes. No posts here. No support document for the change in response times that I'm aware of. (If I'm wrong about any of these please let me know!)
Simply put, WHY ARE YOU ALL SO BAD AT COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT CHANGES? This isn't the first time something's changed we've kind of sort of found out about through interacting with support and then had confirmed much later. This isn't that difficult. Y'all contact me CONSTANTLY about sales and stuff and since I cancelled my monitoring, to pay for the monitoring I no longer have. Surely whoever is responsible for (and on the ball about, I might add!) those can also be put in charge of major service changes and/or new services.
Be better. Please be better for your customers. Stop making us beg for this kind of dead simple, bog standard stuff that should've been there by default. (Yet still isn't after YEARS of asking in some instances.)
Official Solution
davey_d
Community Admin
•
5.7K Messages
13 hours ago
Hi Worthing,
Thanks very much for your feedback. You ask quite a few very important questions in this thread, and we want you to know that we take your concerns seriously.
With regard to Pro and Pro Plus Monitoring: For the time being, these plans are available only to a limited number of users, and we made resources on the Help Center available to support those users specifically. But we’ve got a lot more info coming to all customers when these plans and features are closer to a full launch.
As for the Core Monitoring Plan (formerly Fast Protect Monitoring Plan), the only thing that has changed is the name itself. There is no change to the user experience nor included features. To avoid confusion, we make sure to note it as “Core (formerly Fast Protect)”, so that users know it’s the same service, just with a different name.
Finally, on your question about the monitoring service and the response time of our professional monitoring agents. As you know, there is a grace period after each alarm wherein a user can disarm the system to cancel the alarm event and the dispatch sequence. This is an important feature for preventing false dispatch. We deliberately do not publicize the exact time, to avoid giving would-be-intruders a target. However, that number is based on more than a decade of false alarm data from our customers, so we can strike a balance between giving you time to react, and sending help ASAP. It is also important to emphasize that the grace period applies only to intruder type (entry, motion, and glassbreak) alarms. Fire, environmental, and panic alarms do not have a grace period.
The “2 minute” figure that you mention refers to the Alarm Texts feature, which runs in parallel to the phone call sequence. After an alarm event is received, an SMS text message is sent to your phone immediately, and you have those 2 minutes to respond. So the phone call would happen at the same time that the Alarm Texts timer is still going on. And if you respond to the SMS, that will bypass the grace period and the phone call to your primary contacts, potentially getting police dispatch to your location even faster.
As always, we appreciate how you advocate for our users and Community. Feedback like yours helps us significantly, especially in our commitment to keeping you informed through our Help Center, Community, and other channels.
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