A & E Security and Electronic Solutions — Local services in McMinnville

My review is from the perspective of a prior employee. When I started my job they told me the starting wage of $17 with a promise of pay increase at 90 days. That was the start of their lies to me. You could argue semantics but they apparently meant 90 days worked, not 90 calendar days. But when that day finally came they looked for any excuse to deny that increase citing training. This training was also something they wanted you to do unpaid.

After some time shadowing another tech and eventually being sent to jobs solo I began to see the worst side of the company.

Typically the salesmen will have conversations with the customer and convince them they need certain systems or services all while having no knowledge of what the equipment even is. Sometimes the salesmen would actually lie. I actually encountered this in our front lobby once where he was talking about network speeds he would expect. Actually knowing the radio equipment he was talking about I overheard them saying "you can get gigabit wirelessly to your shop" when that specific equipment was actually bottlenecked to 1/10th of that because of the interface.

The owner is the worst about this as he is the one who dictates most of these terrible practices such as minimum 200% over retail equipment prices on nearly everything in the store room. I've heard, and been on the receiving end, of him yelling at customers or employees over the phone because of things he did or caused. Keep in mind that he is also a salesman and any job that he prepares is often met with heavy sigh.

Often the jobs are incredibly underbid to get the customer only for them to find out the "estimated" hours for install is doubled or tripled and there needed to be additional equipment installed. When the customer inevitably calls to complain about the bill that you have them sign you get called into the office to explain how, even though you kept the customer informed through the entire install, the billed hours are much higher. When you explain how nothing on the estimate was correct and everything you encountered you find that coincidentally you have significantly less hours for the remainder of the work and sometimes are even sent home same day.

With covid being prevalent when I worked there we did get a new hire that I had to train. A week in on the new hire's training and suddenly he is absent. Later we find out that he was exposed to covid. Not even a day later the manager told him to come in even though he wasn't tested. While he was in training we told him all of the shady practices the company was doing at the time as well as when he came back he quit after finding out the other techs weren't even told about him potentially having covid.

Honestly there is more I could speak to but this is already a long-winded review of my experience with the company and I suspect you already understand how terrible it was then, and I...

On August 10th, 2022 we had an employee from A&E security named Eric Wright come to our house with an estimate/proposal for an alarm system. Eric went over the pricing with us and after he was done, told us he needed some sort of a deposit. No where on the estimate or proposal did it ask for a deposit. My wife signed the proposal and we gave Eric a $500 deposit. On August 17th, 2022 at about 10:45am I reached out to Eric and asked what the next step for the alarm was. I did not get a response from Eric until 8/18/22 at about 4:30pm. Eric told me he needed to finsh some things up with my wife. I replied to Eric 2 hours later telling him my wife and I changed our minds and did not want to proceed with this alarm. My wife and I had other financial obligations we wanted to take care of. I told Eric I would like my $500 deposit back. I explained this to Eric multiple times and did not get a response until I threatened legal action. Eric told me I needed to talk to Doug Elsberry. I went into A&E Security and met with Doug Elsberry. Doug told me that signing the proposal/estimate gives them authorization to pull parts needed for the job. Doug also told me he is in the business to make money and he does not like to do refunds. I told Doug after looking through the proposal/estimate multiple times, no where in it does it say there is a non refundable deposit required. Doug agreed and said this should have been explained. I told Doug this was never explained to us. The proposal/estimate is the only document my wife signed for this job. Doug told me they charge a 25% restocking fee. Again none of this is listed on the proposal document that my wife signed. This place is an absolute scam. Eric Wright is a terrible salesmen. I highly recommend avoiding A&E Security, they are clearly out to...

One star because I can't give zero. These people do not want your business. I needed some keys made and tried these folks out. Their hours were posted as 8-5:30. I drove an hour to get there and the place was all locked up at 10AM with a sign that said "Open By Appointment only." No mention of that on their website. I tried calling for an appointment, but got a recording "No one available to take your call." FedEx came up with a package, found the door locked, then started to leave. A lady came out and got the package. I tried to talk to her and she just waved me off and said "Call for an appointment" I told her I tried and got no answer. She just flipped me off and ran inside and locked the door. I'm taking my business to Salem.

BTW, the nasty abandoned car shown in the review from a year ago is still sitting in front of their office. A real eyesore. Very...