SmartCom Home Technologies

Go elsewhere if you can

If I could give 0 stars I would. Sarah, is the most incompetent little girl working there. She was clueless of the most basic questions I asked her about our new service. They are really a headache to work with. I will say I was really pleased with Robert who was very dedicated to addressing my questions and concerns. Overall, I would not recommend them to anyone. Be aware.

We had smartcom do the install for distributed audio and multimedia on our new construction. The products they offer were decent enough and they had a lot of options but their prices were ridiculous. For example, they wanted $ 400 to run a 10 foot HDMI in wall cable. Mind you, this would be done before the drywall was up. Seriously?
Of course, we didn’t have any other options as we weren’t allowed in the house during construction and could not bring in another home theater installer of our own choosing.
My main problem with this company was what happened after install. When the techs came to activate the system, they knew only the basics about how the system worked. Many of the questions that I asked were met with a response of, «Well, there’s a manual on the website.» Ok, so you sell and install this particular product, but you don’t know how it works?
As an aside, the salesman who we worked with told me after we’d finished up and signed the contract that he’d just come to the company after selling heavy machinery all his life. Well, congrats on the career change, but shouldn’t you know something about home automation and distributed audio other than being able to tell the difference between and in-​wall and in-​ceiling speaker?
The final straw came when we tried to get the Wireless Access Point working. It was placed in the front of the house on an outside wall. I’ll admit that I should have educated myself about how these things work before agreeing with the salesman about it’s location. I learned, sometime thereafter, that WAPs should be located in the center of the house to maximize the coverage. As it is, we really don’t get service with the WAP on the second floor of our house (the only reason we got it).
We’e gone around and around with our homebuilder and SmartCom and have not reached what I consider an acceptable resolution at this point.
Knowing what I know now, there is no way I could recommend this company based on their prices and service post installation.
If you need a HDMI cable run for your tv, do it yourself. I’ve since done a few and the total cost for materials and my time was about $ 25 (and that’s with having to cut into the drywall).

I tried to make a residential speaker purchase since they were a Klipsch authorized dealer. Aaron V. told me was told their «dealer contract» required them to install all speakers they sell. I’ve spoken to a number of custom installers already and this sounded very suspicious to me and did not make sense. Their prices were quite inflated, too. $ 200-​$ 300 extra per speaker over other installers that were located closer to DC. And that didn’t even include fishing speaker wires! I tried to purchase locally, but this company couldn’t come close. From their website it appears they specialize in new construction installations, which is why they can probably get away with charging way too much. Even on the main page they state they’re about making a «Profit Center» out of overcharging for low voltage wiring. Makes me really wonder what your money actually pays for when you purchase a new home. Buyer beware!