8 Messages
Simplisafe Experience: 08/23/2025 - Burglary Attempt and Negligent Staff
Hello,
I am writing this review due to negligence behind the outdoor monitoring specialists at SimpliSafe. At around 3:07AM on 08/23/2025, a masked man entered onto our property and successfully broke into one of our vehicles. While this situation is not foreseeable or directly blamed on behalf of SimpliSafe, what is to blame on behalf of SimpliSafe is the lack of action on behalf of the specialist who monitored our outdoor security system, recorded the perpetrator, monitored and witnessed criminal activity, but made no effort to contact the homeowner or emergency services. The only perceivable action that the specialist took was to annotate the occurrence inside the SimpliSafe app and that was all. I am extremely disappointed with the outcome of this as we bought the Pro subscription to feel safe while agents monitor while we are sleeping at night. We did not pay a subscription fee for our monitoring agents to negligently monitor our cameras and make no perceivable effort to protect the lives of the individuals within the property. Additionally, the support staff that we called the morning of the burglary could not even obtain the information of what occurred on the property, so I will do their job for them and tag it below in this review. You are not only monitoring the property of the individuals who pay for this service, but also their lives when they are not consciously able to be awake to prevent situations like this. Please do better moving forward when you are charging individuals for a service that is not properly being completed, because this situation could have been way worse than it turned out. We are cancelling our subscription and moving over to a security company that values the lives of their customers.
Official Solution
simplisafe_admin
Community Admin
•
1.7K Messages
9 days ago
Hello @jeffbrecht93,
I'm really sorry to hear about this experience, and I hope that everything is okay.
We began reviewing the footage that you provided with our monitoring team, and it looks like your camera didn't detect motion until after the person exited your vehicle. This is due to the position of your camera. Once the camera detected motion within its field of view and began recording, it appeared (without full context) that this person was likely to be getting out of their own vehicle and then left the premises without any intervention needed.
Based on what we saw, we proceeded to notify you of an unfamiliar person detected on your property. This is our standard procedure to ensure customers are aware of any activity during monitored hours, even when we don't intervene. We follow customers' preferences on how to notify.
What we'd love to do is work with you to make sure your camera is positioned to capture motion across your full property and set up properly. We'd also be happy to set you up with additional cameras, if needed, to accomplish that. I've forwarded your case details to our Specialist team. They can assist you with the placement of your camera, and discuss the matter further, if you'd like. A member of the team will be in touch soon, so please keep an ear out for their call.
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dlpsr
1.6K Messages
11 days ago
I'm only responding to bump the review, more people need to see before it sinks away forever, except Google search will hopefully tag it in online searches.
A comment; based on my five outdoor cameras;
Regardless of whether the camera's are USB powerd or not, doesn't make them see any further. That I'm aware of anyhow.
Yours appears it might be mounted 10-12 feet high.
OD cams can only see & detect about 30 feet maximum on their best day, in the sunshine.
Night vision @1080p, detection is even worse and that's why the perp is probably only seen getting out of car one.
At night my personal estimate of detection distance is 10 to 15 feet.
I always ran mine with night vision off and motion detection flood lights.
I never saw the camera flood light come on perhaps users are allowed to turn that off, don't know for sure. Maybe it did. Itvnevwr switched to color, regardless There's no user control over the siren that I'm aware of.
Two cars are about 20 to 25 feet, depending on make and model. Camera, perhaps 10 feet high, space between cars a few feet.
The camera probably detected and I'm guessing, when the headlights came on and lit the area up. I've had headlights or any lights, trigger mine among other mysterious detections or firmware bugs.
So add it up. Guessing rear car is about 35 feet from camera mount. The only reason you can see the perp walk away at distance is, the camera was already recording.
These are just my own opinions, some Simplisafe documents do show a little data on approximate detection distances.
Sorry to hear about the break-in, and that all turned well for you and yours. Other than the feeling it leaves with you.
These are just my own personal opinions based on two plus years of 5 outdoor cameras and two doorbells. Which are now essentially useless.
One replaced with significantly better other brand product, 6 more to go.
Good luck!
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captain11
6.5K Messages
10 days ago
@jeffbrecht93 this is indeed unfortunate. I also have three questions before commenting further: first, what state do you live in? (Interested if AI was in play here or not, the state can effect that), second, was the camera that captured this the original outdoor camera or the Series 2 camera? (The series 2 has much better audio capabilities and wonder why the SS agent did not engage this individual. and 3rd, was the camera on AC power? In any permutation, it appears the SS agent failed.
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dlpsr
1.6K Messages
10 days ago
IANAL or 👮.
It appears to me, the perp was only detected when he exited the car he broke into, when the headlights came on, I don't know, may have helped trigger detection. Lights can do that from my experience.
Took him less than 10 seconds approximately to walk to car two, saw it was locked, got nervous and walked away.
That's why it seems very important for the user to have siren control vs Simplisafe locking everything down.
I'm not a computer or internet scientist either.
But I know how these things work a little.
Detection starts, it must ping the security center, send video up, at least a couple to a few seconds, they have to open it or something to look at it, unless it pops up.🤷
Probably didn't have time to respond. Perp was walking away.
If 1080p, that doesn't help, slower in my exexperience, mine were all always 720p, 1080p never worked right and was slower uploads for me.
Personally, I'll never, ever, again, put me or my families security in a strangers hands. Mine only. My setup, I can live with that while I'm still around.
What they might or at least have done, is turn in the siren and call the cops. It was a crime in progess after all.
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