I say to hell with that, why not get a trained technician to come out and service and replace parts at no charge?

I say to hell with that, why not get a trained technician to come out and service and replace parts at no charge?

Platinum security is a spin off of regional reps. from APX security that took off and started their own company. They did really well last season. Very well from what I heard. They would probably hire anyone with any security or summer sales experience. So the claim that they have no former FLS employees could or couldn’t be true you never know.

1. They sell a contract to you for lets say 40 dollars a month and they give you the equipment (more like rent it to you, check your contract if you cancel before the end of the contract) for free.

2. After selling you the contract their initial cost of equipment is lets say 300-500 dollars depending on their manufacturers or equipment distributors.. ex) Honeywell, GE… This is their upfront cost.

3. Over the price of the contract they will make 300-500 dollars minus the total amount you pay at the end of the 36-60 month contract.

4. To make these contracts more liquid or get money for them quickly they will sell these contracts to monitoring station or companies. You are not being monitored by Firstline or hardly any other security company. They sell either out right sell these contracts to monitoring stations (ex) Monitronics, SAI etc… ) or they will rent out some of these monitoring stations per customer which is much cheaper than the rate of 40 dollars a month it is more like 2.25-5 dollars per customer. So if the security company can in fact front the initial cost they will keep you “in house” and rent you out sort of speak.

5. They will sell some contracts for the full contract value to the monitoring stations because statistically if you have a security system you will stay longer than the 36-60 month contract thus they start making money on you after the length of your contract. If you are kept in house the security company will start making money on you about a year and a half into the contract length because they will have covered their equipment costs. But that is not taking into account paying a sales rep and an installer. So they will start to make money at the end of the contract length and they have statistic proof that you as a customer will stay longer than the contract length.

6. The problem with selling or renting you to a monitoring station is that if they don’t get the information correct your system could go off and then if no one calls you know you are not being monitored and the police are not on their way. A small bit of advice to anyone is to make the alarm go off and see if someone calls if someone does then you are in good shape… If not then you are not being monitored. Good luck in this rat race. It is an industry of cut throat sales and marketing…. Good luck consumer and do your homework. So instead of doing the security industry I decided to go into network marketing http://oneyearplan.net/payitforward/
This is better information and will protect you far greater than a security system in the world of a falling economies etc…

You have the best collection of info on Firstline on the entire web. I was an employee last summer, but I did my best to be honest and up front with my customers; I guess thats why I wasn’t a super star with 200 accounts. I feel like I too was lied to looking back on it all.
So as far as everything you’ve put on here, about the upper management and *some* of the employees you are spot on.

Im concerned now about us getting out Tax info back. I received my W2 from my current employer last weekend but still haven’t gotten anything from Firstline. When my manager (who I am still friends with and is one of the good FLS employees) told me that they went under I first felt bad but if it is true that Trevor and Wright pocketed millions each then I hope they get busted. So my question to any Firstline former higher ups (Jake Dahl if you read this) do you know when we are supposed to receive our Tax info from last summer?

Anyways keep the conversation going about these type of companies and the real risks vs reward that is involved. Firstline is not the first to fail at it and there are plenty of others out there.

I agree, no argument. But keep in mind, they wrote those back in late August, when there was no indication that the company was going bankrupt. I doubt there would be too many defending it at this point, though I have had a few on an earlier post of mine.

At the time I wrote this post, there were only two posts on the Internet that were negative. I couldn’t find any articles in the mainstream press or anything that came up on a Google search. That’s one of the reasons I wrote it…to warn off other kids who might have been sucked in by the scam.

There was a website, but it appears to have been taken down. It was there a week ago, so I’m guessing it was pulled down as part of their bankruptcy proceedings.

The folks who worked for Firstline thought they were selling a good product. I think blaming them really gives a pass to the folks at the top who not only deceived customers, but also employees.