Crime Watch came to my house and put in an alarm system over 30 years ago (!) and I haven't had any problems with the alarm. I remember that the cost was reasonable, but this was over 3 decades ago. I know the system still works great because too often, I accidentally set it off. A couple of times over the past three decades, the back up battery dies, so I have to call them up and they come out and replace the battery. A few years ago, they noted during a call to replace the battery that my alarm hardware was dated and they replaced it. About a year ago, I told them that the pressure pads under the carpets stopped functioning years earlier, so they replaced them with more effective and sturdy motion sensors instead. In addition, my keypads were wearing out after 30+ years, so they had to replace them. I can't see any wiring inside my house, so I have no idea how they do what they do. They've given me home security and good service for over three decades. What more can I ask for? read more

This alarm company is really bad, the people work there is rude, the alarms they installed always goes off every night , I think the worker at central station can control it remotely , and when they changed the smoke detectors they charged $150 per detector and $300 per hour for emergency service, they just changed a smoke detector month ago and a false alarm again, the product they used is outdated and doesn't work. I'm going to change a new company and won't do business with this company anymore. read more

Crime watch installed an alarm system at our house 6 years ago. Installation was professional and it has worked well since then. Their monitoring service has also worked as expected. The cost is reasonable compared to national brands. read more

Looks like other folks also had issues with poor communication. We had to do the city mandate upgrade on our fire alarm system to the tune of approximately $50K - so the amount was not insignificant. We were told that they would aim to do it all in one day but may have to come back the next day. Toward the end of the day, I asked for an update so I could let our tenants know if they needed to be home another day. I received no reply and they showed up the next day to the surprise of some tenants. I was not home but have an electronic lock and saw that my door was left unlocked for long periods while no work was being done in my unit. This prompted me to check my security footage and that was when I discovered multiple workers had been using my bathroom without prior consent. After I requested they lock my door - Hello, they are a SECURITY company and to stop using my bathroom. They continued to use my bathroom and someone had the audacity to use my microwave to cook their lunch! I was so disgusted by this that I hired a house cleaner to thoroughly clean before I arrived back home. There was no apology or acknowledgment from management when confronted. It's the responsibility of the company to provide a Port O Potty for their employees and not treat their client's home as a public toilet. I was going to let this go but a tenant reached out to me to say her internet stopped working on the day this upgrade happened and when Webpass came out, they found that her wires were cut and haphazardly taped back together. They also did not take their shoes off even though she left a note on the door requesting this (she had cameras in her apartment.) It's appalling the way they conduct themselves when they don't think anyone is watching. They have no respect for other people's property. read more

Crime Watch Security Systems - Webpass showed me the fiber optic wires they cut. - Security Systems Near Me - San Francisco, California

See all

This system was installed at my building in 2023. After a hugely disruptive install (mostly rude workers/poor communication), the system itself has gone off THREE TIMES and they were all FALSE ALARMS, once at 4am. Since we experienced a fire in 2023, a false alarm is almost as scary as a real alarm and I'm worried it's training residents to ignore the alarm. Really terrible company to deal with because they either don't understand or don't care. Update 9/2024: We had another false alarm today bringing the total false alarms 4 in 9 months. Do not do business with this company. Their product does not work. read more

If you are seeking another fire security company, please choose another company. Here is the reason. Look at their rating here. We are all saying the same thing about this company. Crime Watch hires the dumbest, idiotic people to work for them. They are absolutely rude and really not the brightness. They could not even answer the phone correctly. This is mostly for the male technician and the guys that answer the phones. You always need to repeat everything to them three times. These guys must be related to the manager or owner of the company. If you are the owners of this company, just want to tell you that your employees represent your company. It would be better if you hire competent workers. With you incompetent and rude workers you need to teach them about your product and how to listen to the customer well. Even if these workers are related to you, if they can not do the job well, you need to fire and get rid of them. This is not the first time but have dealt with them in the past. I finally am tired dealing with your staff. I will be looking at other companies that does the job well. I was generous to give you one star. If possible I would have given you a minus five star. read more

This company claims they are authorized to report to the fire department that we do not need their service. This is how they try to scam businesses their way with threatening emails. Poor services have been mentioned by many other reviews and this kind of communications makes them even worse. Avoid at all cost. read more

Crime Watch installed the fire alarm monitoring system. After completion, I decided to go with a different vendor for the monthly monitoring service due to cost reasons. Crime Watch cost 1.5x more in their monthly services and would not price match their competitor. To complete the transfer, Crime Watch wanted $150 for their service call to change out the passwords to my fully paid off equipment that they had set. The technician took 10 minutes to reset the passwords. In addition, I was promised a copy of my job card which still has not been provided. I was told a copy of the job card will be emailed to me. It's been a few months and after numerous emails and phone calls, I've still not have received my job card. My experience has been terrible and I would not do business with Crime Watch again. read more

Horrible system! SF city mandates force owners to choose a contractor. Alarms go off 24/7 with no fire or heat. Two repairs later no fix. Ridiculous. read more

My wife and I live in San Francisco, where a recent ordinance mandated the upgrade of all alarm systems in the city (for buildings with more than 3 units). So, they installed these "CrimeWatch" fire alarms. Also, let me be clear: "upgrade" does not mean "upgrade existing fire alarms", even though they are calling it an "upgrade" -- the existing alarms are still here. That's because these don't actually DO anything, but more on that in a moment. First, on an institutional level, this is a prohibitively expensive service -- one designed, seemingly, to put the few remaining actual small-scale property owners out of business, so they have to sell to bigger property owners, because what SF so desperately needs is more high-income rental spaces, yes? The installation/upgrade cost is enormous -- upwards of at least $30,000 (or more) for a single building, which doesn't include the monthly "monitoring" fee. But the big thing is: this expensive, intrusive system doesn't actually *do* anything. There's no carbon monoxide detectors (or detectors of any kind) involved; they aren't connected to existing systems. So what do they, uh, do? Well! If someone alerts someone at the CrimeWatch building, they will then trigger the alarm and notify the Fire Department. Try to imagine a chain of events where this is useful; where it is possible this will result in the FD being alerted any faster than someone being woken up by an actual alarm and just calling 9-1-1. If it works differently than this, I would love to know, but that's the other thing -- aside from drilling messy new holes in our closets and ceilings, no one has explained what these do or how they work; everything I've learned is from internet searching. The other thing they are is LOUD. This extra loudness is supposedly to pass "the pillow test", a thing that isn't real and was made up to sell this -- i.e. you need to be able to hear it when you're asleep. You know what else is loud? Regular fire alarms. If a regular-ass fire alarm goes off two buildings away, you'll still hear it. The regular alarms in our building are already plenty loud. But! It! Gets! Better! The alarm itself -- which again, isn't actually activated by anything that might make it useful or helpful -- *does* activate if the main CrimeWatch building loses internet. It also (as happened today) seems to activate randomly, so that's nice. I want to add that the individuals performing the installation and service, for the most part, where kind and courteous. I've got nothing against the working folks tasked with performing this labor. However! They also entered our neighbor's unit *without permission*, when she wasn't inside, and actually moved things out of her closet, also without permission. This is the fault of their management and the ones cracking the whip (as is usually the case). This is, in turn, because of the pressure of time put on them to upgrade every building in the city, because every property owner was forced to comply with this ridiculous ordinance (the deadline, of June 2023, has already passed). In San Francisco, it's always a crapshoot if some stupid thing that's been passed is due to a) "well-intentioned" but absolutely boneheaded and not-thought-out ideas by the gutless "progressive" board of supervisors, or b) the result of pure political graft. Usually it's a 10/90 split of A) and B), but I'm not sure this even has anything well-intentioned behind it. Odds are this is long-term trickle-down fallout from the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland almost a decade ago, the sort of hand-waving impotency typical of this city's governance. In conclusion: it is offensive that this upgrade was pushed through, offensive that voters never even had a say in it, offensive that the colossal burden of providing these upgrades is being heaped entirely onto property owners and rental companies, and, most of all, offensive that public safety is being outsourced to a private company. Do you have any idea how bad something has to be for me to say "no, the poor landlords and property owners should not have to pay this"? REAL FREAKIN BAD, MY DUDES. The last vestiges of something even approaching a middle or working class have already been crushed to near-death in this city. Maybe this money could be better spent on upgrading or fixing existing units or -- Heaven forfend we even built anything like new affordable housing. You could even put some basic fire alarms in them; a pack of six retails for $260 on Amazon. That would save more lives in the next 20 years than this. If the city really thinks this horseshit company and their horseshit service is a good idea, then maybe the city should goddamned pay for it. I have a feeling they'd balk, and we'd all be better for it. read more

We have been with this company for over 10 years (parents house and now ours). They answer questions quickly and if there's any problems, they are there next/few days on-site to help. read more

We had our first issue this morning with a beeping sound going off continuously. We called their office and was told how to disable sound which we did. And it worked for about 10 minutes, now is back on. When we called again, we were told their server was down, no internet, and can't do anything for us until is back up. It's been an hour and still waiting for their call back when their server comes back on line so they can send a technician out to investigate. My thoughts are, if their server is down (no internet) that might be the issue. I was reading through some reviews and below was another individual (6/20/2019) whom had the same issue only after 8+ hours later before it stopped beeping. I think they need to get a new service provider (internet) whom can quickly deal with future situations such as this so that no down time will occured during an emergency. read more

Our alarm keeps going off. Second time in 6 months. Crime Watch after hours did nothing. Keeping our whole family up. Maybe there is a worse offering, but I cannot imagine how that could be. Shameful read more

Crime Watch Security Systems for smoke detection started beeping even though there was no fire. I tried to call their service number to get the beeping to stop. I could not get through for the first hour. Once I did get through, I was told that their "Internet was down" so the alarm system was not working and their call center was not able to accept calls either. They said they were going to stop the beeping and call me back. It has been hours. The system is still beeping and there has been no call back... Update: After 8+ hours, the beeping has stopped. Unclear why. read more

Worst company ever. Closes early all the time. Left my business without an alarm for 3 days. If you want to work with the worst people in the alarm world, call these clowns. read more

We have 3 different locations with Crime Watch Security alarm services for many years. They work! Every time someone triggered the alarm someone always called back. That's all we need! Don't think you get sweet talk from their customer service and that's not important to me. What's important to me is reliable. read more

Very professional service. Our 15-year old alarm system broke down in ALWAYS ARMED mode so literally we were trapped inside our house b/c no code would work to disarm local alarm! We dared not open our door b/c we knew that the alarm would sound (b/c no master code worked) & the whole neighborhood & police would be mad at us. We called Crime Watch & they came to our rescue! The technician made quick diagnosis; the management gave us a very reasonable price for the alarm system replacement; our nightmare were resolved very quickly & we feel "secure" again thanks to Crime Watch! read more

Nel Wong the office manager(?) & the technicians he sent out (Manuel & Simon) in 2 separate occasions (for the same job they took 2 trips from SF to the South Bay) were top-notched in the following: professionalism, listening to customers, technical/analytical skills, thoroughness, fair price, clean-up, etc. were nothing short of A+. It's my 3rd time hiring them for security system work. This time, instead of charging me more b/c my systems are greater than 20 years old & beset w/ rodent-chewed wires, they honored the original estimate - surprising (pleasantly) me & my wife! Highly recommended. read more

I have been so satisfied with the service I've received from Crime Watch that I am having them install another alarm in my new house. The owner, Nelson, and his tech, Manuel, have been terrific. This will be the 4th house they'll install a system for me. read more

unprofessional and unfriendly and racist employee. She herself has super strong accent. Started talking right when I picked up the phone without address what's that for.and when I asked her to hold on. she said "OMG do you speak English？let me find someone who speaks mandarin" excuse you. Can you yourself speak English without accent and address what's this for before blablabing everything out？ read more

I have been using Crime Watch Security Systems for several years and I am very satisfying with them. They don't do any advertisement, instead they go by referral, so they can keep their price low. I would recommend Crime Watch. read more

My neighbors system went off accidentally in the middle of the night. It was hugely loud and woke my sick baby. The owner and I both called the service line and were told a voicemail had been left with the representative. That once the rep answered their voicemail they could disarm the system. When I asked for a backup plan and estimated service time, the service rep was rude saying "what don't you understand" and hung up. The alarm continued making for a very painful night. read more

I have only worked with Jackie Lee from Crime Watch and only for my job and he is wonderful. He is always helpful, polite, on-time, communicative, easy to reach and just an all around good person to work with. If I get a security system at my home I will be calling him. read more

I went with Crime Watch Security Systems instead of the big guys (ADT, Bay Area Alarm, etc.) I decided to go with Crime Watch based on several factors, which include quality of work, required monitoring contract terms, and price. On all three fronts, Crime Watch beats the the competition. My installer was very professional, efficient, and he cleaned up after himself. He asked for my input on installation decisions, and accommodated my requests. As for monitoring, many alarm installers nowadays requires a 2-3 year monitoring commitment before they install any alarm. Crime Watch only requires 1 year of monitoring at reasonable rates. As for the final factor, price, Crime Watch is considerably cheaper than the competition. I was able to get the keypads, sensors, and monitoring for a reasonable, total cost read more

Manuel came out as our installation technician yesterday. Clear, concise, on time, and polite. Recommended.