Vivint (formerly APX Alarm)  I'm out of work and tried to have Vivint/APX cancel monitoring service.  They DON'T care. Salt Lake City, Utah

Hello.  I am out of work and unemployed, and have been for several months now.

To reduce monthly expenses, I have been calling all companies and services I can do without, to save money.  But I soon discovered that APX Alarm (now called Vivint) doesn't effen care - The Monitoring Agreement has another 30 months on it!  But I have to continue to WASTE $49.99 every month sending the money to Vivent/APX...

So, what do I do about it?  Hmmm, I decided that if they are going to continue to monitor my home alarm system and require that I still pay them, then I WILL MONITOR THEM FOR FREE!  I won't charge them a dime to test MY Alarm System communicating with their Alarm Monitoring System and Network.  Daily.  In fact, several times a day.  Every day.  Until my I am no longer a customer of theirs.

Here's the WHAT, WHY, WHERE and HOW I do it.  (The WHEN you already know...  OFTEN!)

If I'm going to TEST my Home Alarm System and MONITOR Vivint's/APX response times, I didn't want to put up with the noise, obviously.  So I disconnected the alarm speaker without harming the system.  Here's how I did it:

I popped open the main alarm panel by pushing down the two top tabs with a small flat screwdriver (a pen tip would have worked too), one at a time while pulling back until the tab released on that side, then did the same for the other tab and side.  I then pulled the front assembly outwards and downwards at the top to access the speaker plug on the circuit board that came down with the front panel.

For me, the speaker plug was the white/almond color plug on the left side of the circuit board that had a red and black wire connected to the speaker.  I "pulled the plug"!  (Not by the red and black wires, but with my fingernails on the white/almond plug.)

To ensure I had disconnected the speaker, I opened the front door and sure enough, there was no "Beep, beep, beep" the panel always made when a door or window was opened.  I'm leaving the speaker disconnected for now.  Besides, a SILENT ALARM is way better in my opinion.  Why tip off burglers the alarm is going off?  Better to have them CAUGHT IN THE ACT than to escape and rob someone else!

Now everything is set for me to QUIETLY Test and Monitor the MONITORING CENTER of Vivint/APX.  No more loud noise while waiting for Vivint/APX to call me to verify the alarm.  Besides, the noise would be difficult to talk over anyway, while on the phone.  Of course I don't want the Police to actually show up or have Vivint/APX dispatch some RENT-A-COP over either, so I have the house phone and my cell phone at the ready to answer their expected call.

I happily explain to them that as they are monitoring me, I feel it's important THAT I MONITOR THEM MONITORING ME, to know that their system is working diligently to give me the WARM FUZZIES anytime that I'm feeling insecure about their ability to respond if (1) There was an actual emergency, and (2) If their network can handle the load if there happened to be a lot of alarms going off all at one time or all the time..., and (3) That my alarm system is working.

If they should ask me to stop testing MY alarm system, I will politely, but firmly say, HELL NO!  NOT AS LONG AS I'M A PAYING CUSTOMER!