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Winnipeg Home Security Providers:

SDS Security

Recent Review For SDS Security:
(Added Aug 24/11) This is a truthful assessment of the SDS Security Company. I have been under a contract for them on my rental property since January 2008 and it has been the worst experience I have ever had with a security monitoring company. I take full responsibility and am deeply regretful that I did not cancel my contract within 30 days of the expiration as now I am in business with them for another year (google their contract terms to be aware of this clause).
Throughout my contract with SDS, I have unfortunately witnessed incompetence and terrible customer service at a level that I would never expect from any business. Below is a list of the frustrations and issues I have had with SDS:

•        On our installation date, the technician did not measure correctly (or at all it seemed) and drilled through the wall and into the back of my refrigerator at least four times before he realized there was a problem. This is correct, four holes in the back of my refrigerator.
•        My wife was home during the installation, but as doing other things and trusted that the technician knew what he was doing. After installation, her father dropped by and noticed that the motion detectors were placed in possibly the worst practical place. With their position, someone could have walked through the back door into the living room and taken everything out the front door without ever tripping the motion detector. I do not know how her father, with no security background, was able to notice this and the “experienced” technician did not.
•        Upon complaining about this (2nd complaint and not even through installation), SDS told us that we would have to pay for the monitors to be moved to a position where they would actually be effective.
•        The rest of my complaints can be lumped into one category to abbreviate this review “Terrible and Frustrating Customer Service!” I would call one of the two numbers on their website for every request and issue I had. It never failed that every time I was routed to several different places and my trail ended with someone that could not help me or an answering machine that promised to get back to some time the next day. Every time something came up, my wife and I would honestly argue about whose turn it was to call SDS. That is how frustrating their customer service actually is.
•        For further documentation of the SDS customer experience, please visit: http://sdssecurity.wordpress.com/

As you can assume, I have no positive things to say about my SDS experience. I use Broadview in my personal residence, and have never had one complaint with them, period. By the way, they are about $10/month cheaper as well. Please take all of this into consideration before entering into any agreement with SDS.
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We recently had an alarm system installed in our house by SDS security. We had three companies give us quotes, but we decided to go with SDS because of their honest approach to sales. They gave us an honest opinion of what was required for a good system. They said we could always add additional components later, after we got used to using the system (from a marketing perspective this probably results in more ongoing sales and service in the long-run). We also liked that it was a locally owned company that is dependent on their reputation in community.

Other companies are clearly paying their sales people commission on getting contracts signed for the maximum amount and these people tend to be more aggressive. We had to kick one sales person out of our house because they wouldn't give up when we said we would not sign a contract on the spot.

The house was prewired by the builder, so the installation was relatively easy. The installers were friendly and did a very neat job. After meeting lots of different trades people during the construction of our house, I would rate the SDS technicians near the top. You could tell that they took pride in their work and enjoyed what they did.

In conclusion, we are very satisfied with the initial installation. Everything went well and we got a good system installed for a fair price. I understand that some people get very frustrated with having their system serviced in the future. We will see how that goes, but the good thing is that we have standard equipment monitored by a third party - so we can have anyone service it in the future if we have any problems with SDS.

Each one of these home security reviews for Manitoba have been submitted anonymously, edited only for spam and vulgar language. Keep in mind that these home security companies often have thousands of clients who may or may not be happy with their alarm installation and/or service, and that this is only a small sampling of the opinions of their customers.

Home Security Reviews: Manitoba

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