6 Reasons You Shouldn’t Buy Life Alert

With the various affordable medical alert systems now on the market, offering more features with no-contract monthly plans, does it make sense to choose the famous Life Alert system? The answer for most people is NO, and we explain why below.

At MABG, we’ve reviewed all of the major medical alert systems by testing them extensively over hundreds of hours, and we find more shortcomings with Life Alert than we find benefits. The Cons outweigh the Pros to a large degree:

While the technical service provided by Life Alert is clearly capable and reliable, the costs are so high for what the system delivers that it makes sense to shop the other top brands as well.

Life Alert’s marketing first kicked off general awareness of wearable medical alert systems with its iconic television ads that introduced the “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” line into American culture. Yet oddly, the company doesn’t offer the automatic fall detection that some other brands offer, and this is one its drawbacks, as we discuss below.

Here are the principal faults we find with Life Alert:

1. High Startup Cost
2. High Monthly Fees
3. No Fall Detection
4. Contract Lock-In
5. Pushy Sales Tactics
6. Lack of Options

1. High Startup Cost

Pricing is immediately a problem with Life Alert since the company doesn’t publish or disclose its pricing upfront. You have to call a sales rep to get this information, and we’ve found that they can be aggressive, pushing hard to close the deal.

Our testers were told they could only get the pricing details with a physical brochure mailed to their home address, or through a phone interview that discussed the personal information of our senior – both of these tactics seemed unacceptable.

While your pricing details may be different since there is no published standard, we’ve found through searching publicly available sources that Life Alert asks for an Activation Fee of ~$198. Given that other top brands charge no activation fee and offer the same features, this cost is hard to justify.

Life Alert Activation Comparison

2. High Monthly Fees

Life Alert charges a high monthly fee for service, ranging from $49.95 to $98.85, depending on services. Again, since they do not publish their pricing, we had to go through the hurdle of googling “Life Alert Pricing” to find these rates. The low-end starting cost is still essentially twice the monthly charge of the top brands available.

Life Alert’s prices are the highest we’ve seen anywhere in the industry for basic medical alert service that can be duplicated by other providers. Combined with a contract lock-in of 3 years (see below), Life Alert’s pricing adds up to a considerable cost differential of more than a thousand dollars over the term. A user must ask the question of what you get in addition for that extra money — we don’t see an acceptable answer.

Life Alert Monthly Comparison

3. No Fall Detection

As fall detection becomes increasingly available throughout the medical alert industry, it’s odd that Life Alert has not developed this capability to offer. Falling is the most common accident for seniors (with more than 800,000 hospitalizations each year), and the injuries can be life-threatening.

A user could be saved by the alarm call being sent automatically, especially if immobilized after a fall and unable to press a button. Several top providers offer fall detection as an optional feature, usually available for an extra charge of typically $10 per month.

Even with this extra charge, we note that the price of almost any device would still be lower than Life Alert’s lowest cost – and this would now be for a superior service offering, a package that exceeds merely comparable. As technology develops and the variety of medical alert options grows, Life Alert appears to be slowly dropping behind the state of the art.

Fall detection is offered as an option by providers because not everyone wants the service at first. However, as seniors age, their risk of falling increases. According to one study from the National Library of Medicine, the risk of suffering a fall increases 34% for those in their sixties, 49% for those in their seventies, 65.5% for those in their eighties, and 63% for those over 90 years of age. As a result, it is likely that a person or family may decide to add this option later — another reason to avoid long-term contracts on a product that can’t be upgraded to include fall detection.

4. Contract Lock-In

While the medical alert industry generally offers a no-contract ease of starting and canceling the service, Life Alert operates on a minimum service contract of three years. Sales reps have said this contract can be broken, with a penalty charge. Yet as always with this company, there’s nothing in writing upfront to spell out the cost or the terms.

While most providers operate on a monthly basis, some offer contracts and longer-term plans, generally with lower monthly costs for longer periods of service. By contrast, Life Alert insists on the three-year lock-in and offers no discounted pricing for this.

Canceling the Life Alert contract may be difficult, even in the allowed circumstance of long-term hospitalization or death – you have to send the death certificate in the latter case, which a bereaved survivor might find distasteful. Cancellation in this circumstance is supposed to occur automatically but some reviews by users have cited difficulties.

The sales tactics outlined below generally mean that each individual’s experience may be different, given individual sales and service reps, and with no up-front published standards.

Contract lock-in and lack of up-front transparency did cause the Life Alert company to be fined $750,000 in a 2021 legal settlement after being sued by New York State. The court ordered the company to refund customers who had tried to cancel contracts and met obstacles.

The contract basis of Life Alert is problematic, with a long-term lock-in that doesn’t seem appropriate for aging seniors who may experience changes in circumstances during the three-year term.

Most of the medical alert system providers offer no-contract options. And those that do offer contracts give customers a reduced rate for the contract term.

For example, Bay Alarm Medical has no activation fee, charges $24.95 for monthly service, and on top of this offers a risk-free 30-day trial. The company’s cancellation process is considerate and equitable also. This suits a user base that may initially hesitate to try out a particular device or service for the first time, and may wish to change providers or equipment over time.

5. Pushy Sales Tactics

Life Alert has been called out for its pushy sales tactics. You can’t sign up for the service online, nor find out the costs and terms, without offering up personal information or talking with a sales rep.

In an age when seniors are already one of the biggest targets for phishing and other scams, the rule should be clear that services offering good value have no need to get pushy at the sales end. Aggressive sales, and now a track record of being sued for unfair practices and failing to be transparent are large red flags when considering your options.

Harsh sales and service tactics present the possibility that a user could have problems down the road with customer service. Calling with a question or concern, only to find yourself the target of excessive up-selling that wastes your time and taxes your patience, is not a positive outcome in our view.

Not only is it difficult for a rating service such as ours to nail down the user experience that Life Alert delivers over the long term, and for what real cost, but the uncertainties involved with Life Alert mean that we absolutely cannot recommend it to anyone.

6. Lack of Options

The Life Alert medical alert system not only costs significantly more than its competitors, but it also offers far less of the additional features and conveniences that are now common in the business. The desktop website is outmoded and hard to navigate, as well as offering no pricing information (the mobile site is more usable, but costs remain elusive).

While Life Alert has created a reliable in-house call center that responds promptly, it offers no multi-lingual services. In an emergency, especially when people are distressed, those without English as a native language may struggle to be understood. On the other hand, for minor issues and non-emergencies, the language barrier could cause undue stress and inconvenience. Though we don’t know for sure, it is possible that Life Alert would dispatch emergency services to the home out of caution if they were unable to communicate with the caller. Wailing sirens and the sight of fire trucks and ambulances could cause quite an uproar.

Also, unlike many of the leading providers, Life Alert does not provide complimentary coverage for a spouse: couples must pay for individual subscriptions, adding more cost to an already high base.

As mentioned before, Life Alert doesn’t offer fall detection, which is an option that many seniors and caregivers desire as people get older. Given the high risk and the potential cost of a fall, having fall detection for a reasonable additional charge is now viewed as a savings by many customers in the market. In fact, research suggests that each dollar spent on medical response systems results in over $7 in healthcare savings.

It is tempting to wonder if Life Alert has not progressed since it created a good product and invested heavily to establish its brand name as a market leader. The industry overall has developed radical new technologies to offer great features and flexibility to new and existing users. Meanwhile, Life Alert seems to have taken a different approach and seems to be trading on its old reputation of “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”.

As another example, the company lacks a caregiver portal or mobile app, where busy caregivers and family members can keep track of a senior’s account and condition in real time. This feature is becoming standard as a crucial aid for family and caregivers who want to stay connected to their aging loved ones. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are family caregivers of someone age 65 and older who has a significant impairment. Even when a caregiver lives with the person who requires assistance, constant supervision can be difficult.

All of this raises the question of whether Life Alert will be able to adapt technically when rival medical alert systems advance and offer new features and services to their subscribers.

Life Alert Key Specifications

Conclusion

As a ratings service, we are impressed with the companies we’ve reviewed, having spent hundreds of hours testing in order to come up with our ultimate selection of the best medical alert systems for 2024. Some fine products exist, with technical proficiency and user convenience apps built-in. And although Life Alert relies on legacy name recognition, customers are getting superior value for much lower prices with the top brands we’ve thoroughly extensively here.

None of these companies require lock-in contracts without offering price incentives, and none of them are known for pushy sales representatives. We can’t say the same for Life Alert, which is why we’ve provided this explanation of why we give the company’s offering such a low score — in fact, why we advise against it.

To be clear, the Life Alert offering works completely reliably: any user could feel secure about getting help in an emergency, and quickly.

But other medical alert providers offer comparable benchmarks, and a superior set of features, for half the price of Life Alert.

Therefore, we encourage you to shop around. AARP recommends medical alert systems but doesn’t endorse any particular brand, so it’s a good idea to explore each company. Take the time to compare service providers so you can select the one that best fits your circumstances and offers the best value for your money.

To get started, see our overview on how to choose the best medical alert system, or jump directly to our recommendations.