My negative experience with vivint
The pitch was aggressive. The sales rep knocked loud as hell, like a cop. Woke up my pregnant wife and demanded she come down too. I told him she is staying upstairs and he can kick rocks if that is a problem. He congratulated me on the pregnancy and continued his pitch.
That said, with a baby on the way... I want my wife to feel safe when i am not home. Now and after our son is born. I would not have agreed to this had i known i was opening a $5000 line of credit. Partially my fault for not being assertive enough.
I wish the sales rep would have been more honest with me. I took the time to briefly read the contracts which seemed to upset him. I feel bad for the people that are being preyed on by these types of sales tactics.
He lied directly to my face and said that the loan he was trying to get me to sign was "not a loan." He had initially said that "there is no hard credit check with our line of credit partner *bread*" Then, shocker, it is actually a secondary credit provider that DOES do hard credit checks.
My dude, it says *THIS WILL REQUIRE A* ***HARD*** *CREDIT CHECK* right here. Which he pretended to forget was a thing, until that very moment, after assuring me that the loan installment provider (somehow not a loan) was "Bread" and that they did not do hard credit checks.
This is a loan for the equipment, clear as day. I don't care that it is "0% interest."
It isn't "free" or "included'" as he implied that it was. There are just no upfront costs if you take out the loan. I'm sure that those sales tactics are good for the company's bottom line, but it makes for a VERY bad public image. Honesty might not sell as well, but I am a very disgruntled customer. I WANTED the service and was going to get it anyway, you did not have to lie to me, ***Yousef***.
Unrelated to the Rep, the installer was a very pleasant softspoken man with neck tattoos. Loved him. Very kind and considerate.
All said: it is a moderately acceptable quality product that meshes with existing myQ garage door openers and google nest thermostats
Update #1: I called to cancel and was blatantly ignored and hung up on several times. I got to an indian call center, then a latino one, and at the third stage finally an american. They all aggressively tried to keep me on with promises of "$10 off for 12 months" or even "$300 off the first year." I told each of them that I was not interested in anything short of free equipment, as the original sales pitch promised. The third/final customer retention agent made it very clear that it (equipment cost waiving) couldn't be done and began the cancellation process for me. He personally promised me a full refund and that vivint will handle canceling my Fortiva Loan. Now I'm just waiting on a service tech to be scheduled to remove the equipment.
Update #2: Yousef saw this post in the vivint subreddit, had it deleted and he is very unhappy with me. I imagine the line was being recorded so he couldn't otright say it, but he was dancing around calling me a liar for saying what I did in this post, implying he was fully transparent from the very beginning. He was clearly upset about seeing this and worried about how it made his "team" look bad. He has now claimed that Vivint will transfer the loan to themselves and handle getting the fortiva line off of my credit. I told him what I told the rep who initiated my cancellation. No equipment cost or I walk. Supposedly he can make that happen, but I am highly doubtful. It is 3:30pm and he was supposedly calling back at 2pm. I have no intention of staying, but lets see if he can actually wow me with no equipment costs and no contractual obligation of any kind.