A "zero star" rating would be overly generous...

Over the past few months, I've run a few "security response tests", tripping my alarm just to see how quickly they respond. The longest time before a call (barring times where they did not call) was approximately 40 minutes, the shortest was approximately 15 minutes.

Now for the latest bit of fun and games with them: We just came back from a short holiday, being away from Thursday morning through to Sunday afternoon. I had arranged a house sitter for this time, and called National on Thursday before we left to let them know.

I explicitly requested that if anything happens with my house alarm before the coming Monday (which happens to be today), then they should contact my house sitter first.

Due to being on holiday in a bad signal area, I missed 4 calls in total from them, 2 on Friday, and 2 on Saturday. All of which fell DURING the period that I told them to call my house sitter first. Upon getting my spare house keys back from my house sitter today (Monday), she tells me that National didn't try call her even once through this entire time.

Getting home yesterday (Sunday), I accidentally triggered the house alarm myself. After an hour and a half, I tried to call THEM to see what's going on, thinking perhaps that my alarm was not working correctly.. I gave up waiting after listening to a repeating "Your call is important to us, please hold for the next available operator" message for over 3 minutes.. As of today (midday on Monday) I have STILL not heard anything from them.

This whole thing is bordering on **************** here, they're charging monthly fees for a service that they cannot provide. I'm sorry to say, there really is just no hope for this company...