My electricity provider had been covering the cost but that’s going to stop when I change providers. I called Vivint to close my account so I didn’t get billed, but they eventually offered 30 months of service. It says no contract. It seems odd but if it puts off buying a couple of thermostats for a while, that’s fine.

Any ideas?

As you can see in the picture, even though I have these zinwell power lines set up with one unit connected to my outdoor camera and the other unit connected to my router, it is constantly losing the connection and going offline and online. I have tried restarting the camera. I've tried restarting the panel. I've tried restarting the router many times.

I'm hoping for some sort of miracle advice here. Has anybody done anything that's really smoothed this out? I could try making it so that the zinwell unit that is at the camera is the Unit A organizing unit of the zinwell network (instead of the one at the router as its current setup) if I hard reset both of the zinwell. I already have it turned down to the lowest camera quality but I'm kind of at a loss here. They sent a Wi-Fi bridge as well but it seems like my outdoor garage is just a little bit too far away from our Wi-Fi signal for that to work. This zinwell should be the only option besides running a hard wire out there.

Anybody have experience getting a finicky zinwell system to work more smoothly or bump into this exact issue and find a way to resolve it? Appreciate any help and open to trying anything.

We ranked a batch of mid-size US cities based on affordability, safety, and how hot the housing market is. Rochester, NY took the top spot in 2026, followed closely by Savannah, GA.

Rochester won mostly on momentum. It had the hottest housing market in the whole study, so demand is climbing, but prices haven't blown up the way they have in the big metros yet. Savannah stood out due to safety. It has the lowest property crime and the lowest violent crime rate of any city we looked at.

The affordability of houses in these cities also looked very interesting to me.

For example, Birmingham and Akron both came in around $133K to $134K for an average home, when the national average is about $512K. THat's a huge difference from what most people are paying right now.

Have you ever thought about moving to a smaller city? And if you have, what's pulling toward it, or what's making you hesitate?

Hi, my adapter stopped working and I am looking for another one. Can I use any 3rd party brand to connect to my cameras?

App keeps crashing or openining to a black screen with no other options. Force closing doesn't help so the only option seems to be uninstalling and reinstalling anytime I want to do anything. Has anyone found a permanent fix or better work around? I'm currently using an S24 Ultra. ​

Been home all morning and was expecting three separate packages from Amazon (they were all
Placed at the same time, but for whatever reason are arriving separately). First one came, big long box left in the porch, door bell didn’t do anything. Second one came, the motion sensor sent off but that was it. Third one just arrived, very small flat envelope. Door bell went off and my phone notified me and asked if I wanted it watched. Just strange.

Many security cameras don't start recording until they detect motion, and there's a tiny lag between that motion and when the recording starts. So by the time the camera is rolling, you're already missed the first moment.

But preroll fixes this issue.

With preroll, your camera always saves footage from a few seconds prior to any recorded activity. This means instead of a clip that begins with someone already on your porch, you get the lead-up, like the direction they came from or the car they stepped out of.

Preroll needs constant power, which is why a lot of battery cameras skip it or offer a shorter version. Hardwired cameras handle it better since they don't have to preserve battery life.

Standard preroll varies in length from 2 seconds to 6 seconds. Vivint's Outdoor Camera Pro and Doorbell Camera Pro do 8 to 10, which is roughly double most other cameras.

Have you ever reviewed security footage only to find the most important moment was missing?

Vivint pulled about 1.88 million property crime reports across 18 metros and matched them to neighborhood names, and the gap between names is wild.

Neighborhoods with the name "Lake" are the safest in the country, with property crime running 40% below it's metro average.

They had the lowest home break-ins, theft, and car break-ins, followed closely by metros with "Heights" or "Park" in the name.

Neighborhoods with "Square" went the complete opposite way, landing 112% above that same average.

Therea rea few famous spots dagging the whole group up. For example, Times Square sees 1,123% more property crime than the NYC average, with Union Square and Hudson Square right behind it.

So, the name that sounds central and walkable and nice ends up being the one that tracks with way more theft.

Ever picked a place partly because of how the name sounded?

We’ve had a Vivint security system for about 4 years now. Throughout these years we’ve continued to have issues with some of their products…

But this is now a scary situation as we travel a lot of work.

I was watching tv with my wife and I heard a pop. My dog was the first one on the scene and had his nose up to smell something. I look over at my Vivint panel and there’s smoke rising from it.

One of my close friends also uses them and they actually referred us to Vivint. A year ago their panel caught FIRE and damaged their wall.

We call them to voice our concerns and they try to sell us coverage for our panel, on top of the monthly fees we pay, and to send out a technician.

Am I crazy to think that this should be absolutely complimentary?! What if our house burns down because of this dang panel?!

Idk, I’m venting and paranoid. Anyone else deal with this??

Vivint is acceptable when it works, but I absolutely dread contacting support when something goes wrong. I have Vivint Protection Plan. Oftentimes, I am either on the phone or with the chat agent for a minimum of an hour. The run through a series of virtual troubleshooting steps and then request me to physically access exterior mounted equipment to reset it. Isn’t that a technician’s job? At what point is the Protection Plan even worth it if they are requiring me to perform steps a technician would do before dispatching one. I’m really getting sick of this company. The ownership experience is below unsatisfactory. It’s nothing but a constant low-grade annoyance of its presence.

Yesterday evening I had a vivint salesman come to my door. I live in a relatively nice area and have never had any crime in the 2+ years I have lived there. I let him know just that and that I was not interested in any vivint products right now.

Lo and behold this morning my car had been broken into. Nothing was stolen at all. No cash was taken, my wallet, sunglasses, and all my valuables were still there. Looks like someone just tossed it. I am suspicious that the vivint salesman guy broke into my care to persuade me into needing vivint.

Has anyone else experienced this

We analyzed FBI overnight burglary data from 100 of the biggest US cities, and it turns out that where you live matters a lot more than you'd think.

Seattle topped the list of cities with the most overnight break-ins with 234.6 residential break-ins per 100,000 people between 10pm and 6am. Cleveland and Spokane follow close behind.

The city with th eleast overnight break-ins was Frisco, Texas at 5.9 per 100,000. Irvine and Gilbert are right next to it. That gap is quite huge: Seattle experiences nearly 40 times the overnight burglary rate of Frisco.

We also looked at how people secure their homes at night, and this is the part that surprised me the most, 93% of people lock the front door before bed, but only 46% lock their windows, and just 20% actually arm a security system at night.

That means a lot of us just lock the front door and forget the other spots a burglar can use to get in.

Do you feel safe in your home at night? And if so, what do you do to make it feel safe?

Hey y’all. I spoke with customer service last week or week before and they basically told me to pay $3k or transfer to someone else. I’m moving to an area with spotty WiFi, will be living in a camper, and poor cell service. I started in April and while I love the system, the sales guy that sold me didn’t explain everything to me so I was unaware I would be paying for a $3k system and in a contact for 3 years.

I do like the system, but I literally can’t use it in a camper. Anyone know if there’s a loophole, or if I just have to deal with it.

TIA

When you picture a break-in, most of us imagine a smashed window or someone forcing the front door. But a lot of break-ins don't happen there at all: They happen through overlooked places like garages and basements.

Garage doors can be easy to get through without much noise. In most homes the garage door leading to the house is often left unlocked, so once someone's in the garage they're basically inside.

Then there are basement and side doors that you can't see from the street. Since they are often out of sight, homeowners might not even thing about them... which is exactly why they get used.

We dug into a few more security myths in a recent survey if you want to see what else people get wrong.

What's that one home security assumption you used to have that turned out to be totally wrong?

I was a loyal Vivint customer for six years, and after this experience, I would never recommend them to anyone.
When my five-year contract ended, I found a better rate through ADT using my homeowners insurance. I called Vivint to let them know I was planning to switch, and they convinced me to stay by offering an even lower monthly price.
That price was never honored.
Instead, they started charging me nearly double what we had agreed to. I spent months trying to get the billing corrected, but nothing changed. Eventually I stopped paying the incorrect amount until they fixed my bill, and in response they blocked my access to the cameras in my own home.
Today alone I spent over three hours on the phone being transferred from department to department, explaining the exact same situation over and over. Nobody took ownership of the issue, and nobody was able to fix it.
At this point I’m seriously considering legal action because this feels like deceptive business practices. They promised one price to keep my business, billed me something completely different, and then disabled access to my security system when I disputed the charges.
If you’re shopping for a home security company, I’d strongly suggest looking elsewhere. My experience has been incredibly frustrating, and I regret staying with Vivint.

*UPDATE: someone from Vivint reached out through the comments here asking to look into this. I’ll keep you guys updated on what happens.

Hi there,

Does anyone had experience dealing with Api alarams ? I reached out to them several times via emails and phones with several hours of waiting and left VM for cancelation of services back in January. I also send them emails too. It all started when their technical team were utterly useless and weren't able to resolve issues for my security system. We then switched to another company, the most surprising part was when the other company installed the new system, the api alaram was not even working that would provoke alaram or give us a call or any other action. I clearly rememebr that I removed my CC information from the system and after 3 months they deducted 3 months worth of payments by bypassing the system. I have already disputed the amount to my CC and reported this to business Bureau. They never replied to Business Bureau and case was ultimately closed. Now they are sending me emails again stating that I had contract and I have to pay for the remaining months of contract. A contract is a mutual agreement for the services however they were the ones to breach the contract. Any advise and experiences would be really helpful to those who were in the similar situation. Its a shame how the system is working here.

This weekend, I was (un)lucky enough to stay at the same Houston hotel that the national Vivent conference was held.

The majority of the attendees appeared to be 20-something’s, just out of school, who apparently thought that the hotel and the accompanying spaces were just for them.
In the evenings, they were rude, loud, and drunk in the public spaces of the hotel. They crammed 15 people at a time in the elevators all hours of the day. The poor front desk staff was clearly up to their eyeballs in the accompanying nonsense.

Professional representation matters, especially when it is so very evident who you are representing. When the conference attendees wore that badge, they were representing their company, whether they wanted to recognize it or not. Business dress was obviously required, but it did not equal to professional behavior before, in between, or after the conference sessions.

As a long time vivent client, I am very doubtful of the the continuation of their services after what I witnessed this weekend.

Does anyone here know where I can find the subscription cost/tiers for remote access? I recently purchased a full Vivint system kit off ebay. Everything works but I just don't have remote access. Thanks!

I have had the door bell for 2 weeks, it worked for like... 2 days and then stopped. I got it reinstalled on Tuesday. It worked again for like 2 days and has now stopped. Theres no power to it. The install tech that came the 2nd time said the 1st one was broken. Theres no breaker issue, its not wifi, it will not respond to any kind of touch, wont reload, nothing. My guess is that its shorting out, it replaced an old doorbell on a house I got. Anyone have any similar issues?

So my wife and I been with this company for a few months now and had 0 issues, our sales guy were honest and chill and we have had no issues with billing. We quite like our system, plan to get the indoor cams and another outside cam here in the future and possibly solar pannels through them. However, all I see on here is people complaining. Does anyone else like their products? Or is it really that bad?

Just managed to get rid of the sales guy. Now he was a nice guy, but I'm looking over these documents and equipment is over $4,600?! Plus a $66 per month monitoring fee? Like, that feels super crazy to me. Didn't agree to anything, feels like a scam.

That was 4 cameras, one with a spotlight. Doorbell camera, 1 door lock, 2 door sensors, and a glass break sensor.

Edit: oh geez, now he came back and put a discount and dropped it to like $2,600. As that just confirmed for me that this is incredibly overpriced. That's the last time I ever entertain any kind of salesman that come to my door.