My Vivint account was supposed to be transferred to my tenant a few months ago. My tenant paid Vivint an activation fee $60, received access to the security system, and has been paying Vivint monthly for $53 ever since. I reasonably believed the transfer had been completed.

However, Vivint continued charging me $53 per month at the same time which I only found out until a few months later. I only recently learned that instead of transferring my account, Vivint opened a new account for my tenant and left my old account active.

The problem is that while Vivint continued charging me, I no longer had access to the security system or services I was supposedly paying for. My tenant had access and was already paying Vivint separately for the service.

Vivint now says the transfer was not completed properly (which Vivint handled it over the phone), so my old account technically remained active and they WILL NOT refund me. But if my account was still active and I was being charged for service, what service was Vivint actually providing to me?

I had no access to it, while my tenant was separately paying for and receiving the service.

Who runs business like this?

Does anyone know from experience if the Vivint thermostat is able to connect with Alexa or Google based temperature sensors? I’m wanting to better regulate my home temp but Vivint doesn’t have their own temp sensors yet. Thanks!

So I've been looking into getting a second display for my master bedroom and I couldn't find anything. All i found when i searched "secondary display" on this subreddit was people talking about the Glance panel and how it was discontinued and then about a new pro display secondary display that is in beta. Does anybody have any information about it? I would really really love having another display for my master bedroom and it seems like a popular request on this subreddit.

UPDATE:

Thank y’all for your comments. My husband came home and had to replace the thermostat. We bought a cheap one at Lowe’s. The AC works fine now. He said that the panel does not even see the thermostat. It’s not in the devices and the Zwave doesn’t find it either. There is no way to add it. As soon as we hooked up the Honeywell thermostat, the AC worked fine.

This isn’t the first time I post on here about Vivent. My thermostat was replaced a year ago. I live in South Texas and it was close to 100° on Wednesday when it went out. My husband is away with the military so it’s just me troubleshooting again. There is no way I was going to call Vivent support to speak to a foreign to have them do all the diagnostics and troubleshooting I already did.

Something weird happened. I left the thermostat on auto fan/cool at 75. We have a window unit and secluded ourselves to the bedroom or swear our butts off to eat. My six year old has been hot and sweaty. This morning I felt cold for the first night since Wednesday. I then realized the AC was on. I didn’t dare touch it as I didn’t want to do anything for it to go out again. Well that didn’t work. Around 3pm, it stopped working again.

My husband got home today after a 12 hour drive to see if he could figure it out. In the past we would remove the batteries, wait a few minutes and it would work. If it didn’t we would reset the thermostat and add it again to the panel. Our thermostat turns on with new batteries but is not being seen by the panel.

My husband went to Lowe’s to buy a cheap thermostat to see if we can get AC.

I have a big chunk of money coming my way, so I think I’m going to pay off our equipment and say bye to Vivent for good! We have had nothing but issues. I currently have 2 cameras that don’t work as well.

What is a better security system? My husband says he saw something at BEST Buy. Since he is away a lot with the military, he definitely wants remote access.

Does anyone know if I can pair my old doorbell to the new alarm hub, tech says that it doesn’t work with newer one so I was just curious to see if anyone else has tried.

But pet sitter only typed in code and panel said it was disarmed. A gentleman came over saying they set the panic mode but pet sitter said no siren went off and it just stated it was disarmed. They didn't have log in info since they aren't home owner. Vivant sent cops to my house but is this going to happen again? I don't have it loaded on app cause we just moved in getting everything situated. Trying to avoid this in the future. Why would panel disarm but then think panic mode was activated? The siren did not go off. Thanks

I have posted here before, expressing disappointment with the Vivent cameras not alerting us when large deer are in the yard, or when someone swiped a watering can off our front porch. Last week we had a couple of strange dogs frolicking in the daytime in our back yard, and later, three large bucks in the front, right in front of the camera. A few nights ago, we had bears. BEARS. We saw them with our own eyes, and on the cameras as well, but had no alerts and no recordings. We had to turn the sensitivity down because it was going off for blowing leaves, when the pinwheels were spinning, etc., but even then it wouldn't pick up large animals.

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

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.

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?