"One of the best companies (Support/Sales) I've worked with"

I started in the Security Camera industry a few years ago. A previous company promised everything and after failed/false promises I decided to look elsewhere. I did MONTHS of searching and SCW came up over and over. I got in touch with Jeff at SCW who is now my rep. 1 year ago or so I started building a system for my house and a close friends. After half a year, I pulled the trigger and purchased multiple home alarm systems for myself and a close friend. To this day, I have yet to have a negative experience. They are up front about everything, their support (I called a few times) either answers right away or you might wait a bit and if it's more than a few minutes, leave a message and they call you back insanely fast! EVERY team member I've dealt with has had an amazing personality. They aren't there to do just a job, but build a long lasting relationship. I can't count how many times they have gone above and beyond for me to make sure deadlines were reached, products were shipped in time etc. I've been in the IT industry for well over 35+ years and when I tell you it's a pleasure to deal with SCW (sales, support, shipping) you can rest assured your experience will be awesome! I've closed my accounts and tossed my previous alarm and security camera systems and will be staying with SCW permanently.

"Talking with customer service and tech…"

Talking with customer service and tech support was the main reason on choosing SCW

"My boss told to get one and I was not…"

My boss told to get one and I was not disappointed . Thanks

"Excellent company to deal with."

Excellent company to deal with.

"SCW Rocks!!!"

I've had my SCW system, 11 cameras & DVR for one year & everything has worked great. SCW is a great company! The owner is a very caring person & appreciates his employees. Their sales team & Tech support team are second to none. I researched several different security cameras companies & SCW was definitely the best choice for me. Thank you SCW team!!

Jim
Ringgold, Ga

"High quality system/Fantastic Support"

I just completed installing an Admiral Camera System, NVR. I had to go through two support techs to get everything set right. They were Allison and Andrew. They both were beyond marvelous in their professionalism and expertise. They slowed down when I needed additional explanations.

I actually had to 'trash' another company's camera system (Starts with an "L"), which was wireless based. The cameras failed often, and did the support, and eventually that company stopped supporting the system I had just brought just a few months ago.

I researched the internet for camera systems, when I came across SCW. Now, I'm in bliss, when it comes to security around my home … I can even see the bobcats, deer, and alligators peeping out of the wetlands and lake.

Back on topic … SCW equipment and support is high top shelf … I would recommend them to businesses and homeowners alike.

Cheerz,

SubVet Tony

"hardware good, software quite poor"

"Professional Grade" doesn't mean what I hoped it meant.

I installed 3 Deputy 4.0 cameras and the 4 camera Admiral NVR last November. I hired an electrician to run a bunch of new cable to support this, so it was expensive. I've put dozens of hours into trying to get it all to work correctly and reliably, and it still doesn't. After several attempts to resolve issues with support I've concluded that "pro" doesn't mean robust and highest quality, rather it seems to mean "appropriate for an application with a full-time employee who sits around watching the screens and keeping the system working."

My application is a private residence with CAT5 cabling that terminates in a service closet. The NVR needs to go there, while video display needs to be possible elsewhere, e.g. in the kitchen or by the front door, accessed from the NVR via HTTP over ethernet. This is an extremely common way of assembling systems.

Here are the problems I've found.

1. Video display over HTTP *only* works with a several-years old obsolete and insecure version of Internet Explorer. Although I read a lot of documentation before purchase, I didn't notice this problem. Support tells me it's due to patent issues around the video compression used. I can understand that problem arising, but in such a situation it's their responsibility to find a better solution fast, rather than sell a crippled product, or expect users of a 'security' product to rely on a known insecure old browser to use it. I have numerous linux and mac computers in my home, none of which would run this old version of IE, so I had to go out and buy a new surface tablet that is now the dedicated display.

2. The full set of camera features cannot be configured from the SCW View Station windows application, which is the only purportedly full-functioning application they provide. This application isn't really stand-alone since it delegates most of the NVR interaction to a session in the obsolete IE browser. The appearance of screens differs from the documentation provided at the SCW website, and it appears to be missing lots of features. For example there's no way to configure the person detection feature, which is one of the critical features affecting my decision to purchase this equipment.

Through my interaction with support I got the impression that they expect the NVR to be connected directly to a display monitor via HDMI, e.g. at the desk of the poor guy tasked with watching it all day. I did try connecting a monitor directly to the NVR one time, but my wiring closet is cramped, it was very unpleasant, and frankly the interface presented on that monitor didn't seem to support full configuration either.

3. The NVR user interface lacks other basic features. For example, there's no way to examine the state of data recording on disk. It just always says that the disk is 100% full. It's not possible to see how much data is being retained for each camera, the time period covered, or decide to delete or offload any of the data. Huh? How can this not be possible? (It is possible to download individual clips when viewing the history of one camera, but that's time consuming and awkward and not appropriate for automated backup.)

4. It's unreliable. I have my video monitor mounted in the kitchen so my family can see who's at the door if the bell rings. In order for that to happen, the windows tablet has to keep the IE browser window connected to the NVR via HTTP, and the NVR has to keep streaming video. At least once a day that fails. Usually just refreshing the tab reconnects the video, so I suspect that the NVR is dropping the stream for some reason. But, this means that video is often not available at the moment it's needed, and at a minimum requires 10s of seconds of screen tapping and waiting. Worse, at least once a week the NVR just stops answering requests for an extended period. Usually it eventually comes back, but at least once a month I need to go and power cycle it to bring it back on line. Pro?

Here's what I wanted, that the system won't do adequately:
1. Make realtime display from the cameras available at several places in the house, so I can see who's at the door, or in the yard, right now.
2. Reliably record video from all of the cameras and flag the rare instances where a person appears in the frame, so I can easily review just those clips once a day, or once a week. I don't have time to scroll through the history display via the View Station app, which is very awkward and flags every waving branch all day long.

I installed this system because I thought it would provide much higher resolution images than my Nest cameras, give me more control, and more reliability since they use cable to the NVR rather than WiFi to the base station (which doesn't work for my outdoor locations). But, it hasn't worked out that way. During the past year my Nest cameras have gotten much better at people detection due to software scanning up in the cloud, while SCW has continued to promise a big software upgrade with Cirrus that hasn't appeared. I wish I could get the Nest cloud to process the SCW camera feeds and chuck the NVR.

Why 3 stars instead of 1? I'm trying to be fair. The cameras have worked well, and my impression is that SCW is trying, but they just don't know how to do software. They need to find a partner who can, or open their system so that the end user can make it work.

"I asked a stupid question and was treated like royalty."

Andrew gracefully and politely answered one of the most boring questions in the industry, without sounding condescending or inconvenienced about repeating, for the umpteenth time, how to playback a video clip in the new version of your software.
Thanks for employing Andrew, and everybody else that shows up to work with such a great attitude.

"Great customer service!"

Great customer service!

"A+ Customer Service!"

Oh, Bonnie! What can I say? I’ve been calling in orders the last few weeks and she is on it! Even stopped a shipment to swap a camera. Then, I called for a better example of a camera’s quality and Stu stepped up and setup a demo and recording just for me! Sorry Stu, I went for the PTZ instead but you went above and beyond to help me! Thanks! More orders to come!