Life Alert 2024 Review: 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Choose Life Alert

7 Reasons Not To Buy Life Alert Systems

1. No Automatic Fall Detection.
2. No Caregiver Tracking Portal.
3. No Price Transparency
4. High Startup Cost.
5. High Monthly Fees
6. 3-Year Contract Lock-In
7. Pushy Sales Tactics

Table of Contents

1. Company Overview
2. Life Alert Medical Alert Systems
3. Life Alert Features
4. Life Alert Pricing

Company Overview

Though they didn’t invent the medical alert system, Life Alert is easily the best-known medical alert provider. Famous for its “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” TV commercials, the company raised awareness of the risk of senior falls and of how medical alert systems can help. For many people, the term “life alert” is synonymous with “medical alert.”

Founded in 1987, the company has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.  With a large base of customers, the company says that it answered more than 45,000 emergencies in 2020.

But in our view, Life Alert has been coasting on its reputation for years. While competitors have been introducing innovative new products – such as medical alert watches – and adding exciting new features like automatic fall detection to their existing products, Life Alert has fallen far behind.

Life Alert Medical Alert Systems

Life Alert systems offer a good, basic functionality along with reliable emergency monitoring.  The company offers two systems:

• Life Alert Medical Alert – Their basic in-home system
• Help On The Go + GPS – Their mobile system for seniors who are active outside their home

Life Alert Basic Medical Alert

Life Alert offers a standard home medical alert system. This system consists of  a base unit looks a bit like a telephone answering machine, with a built-in help button and a speaker, as well as an independent help pendant that can be worn around your neck or on your wrist.  Push the button and the Life Alert’s emergency operators can communicate with you or send emergency responders if you aren’t able to answer them.

New for 2024, Life Alert has improved the system by incorporating a Micro Voice Pendant that allows two-way communication with their emergency center.  This corrects a past problem with their system, where you could only communicate through the base unit. That can be a problem if you have an emergency somewhere else in the house and can’t speak into the base station.

With the Micro Voice Pendant you can easily speak to emergency operators even if you’re in another room.

The voice pendant is a feature other companies have offered for years, so it’s good to see Life Alert finally add something similar in 2024. 

Help On The Go + GPS

Help On The Go + GPS is Life Alert’s version of a mobile medical alert system.

Many seniors remain active and need their medical alert system to go with them when they leave their homes.  For these seniors, a mobile, GPS-enabled medical alert is a good choice.  

These systems are smaller and don’t use the bulky desktop base unit.  The entire medical alert is contained in a small pendant that can be worn around the neck or clipped to your waist. 

When you need help, just push the large help button and connect to Life Alert’s emergency operators.  Since the system has a built-in cellular connection, it is able to contact the emergency operations center without needing a separate cell phone.

Life Alert’s Help On The Go + GPS has one strong point: it never needs charging. 

The device contains a built-in battery that lasts for up to 10 years. Since the system only needs a charge when the button is pressed, it doesn’t drain the battery and maintains a long life.

However, there is a downside to Life Alert’s approach: since the system is only “on” when the help button is pressed,  the device does not offer location tracking, something that is very useful for a mobile system.

Other GPS medical alert systems continuously send location updates to their emergency monitoring center, sharing your location in real-time.  While this shortens the system’s battery life, it allows the call center to immediately know your location in an emergency.   

Location tracking also allows family and caregivers to see the wearer’s location through a caregiver tracking portal or app.  Life Alert doesn’t offer such a portal (for more on this, see below). 

Surprisingly, the Help On The Go + GPS system lacks automatic fall detection, a feature that is available in nearly all other mobile medical alert systems (either as a built-in feature or through an additional fall detection pendant).  The lack of automatic fall detection is a major deficiency for a mobile medical alert.

Life Alert Features

While Life Alert’s systems offer a good, basic functionality, they lack many features that are becoming standard in the industry.  In particular, their systems lack a caregiver tracking portal and do not allow for automatic fall detection. 

No Automatic Fall Detection 

None of Life Alert’s medical alert systems offer automatic fall detection, something that nearly all of its competitors offer as either a built-in feature or as an add-on to their systems.

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

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.

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, the price of competitor’s medical alert systems are still lower than Life Alert’s lowest cost. As fall detection technology continues to improve, Life Alert appears to be dropping behind the state of the industry.

No Online Caregiver Portal

Though Life Alert’s Help On The Go system offers GPS tracking, only the company’s emergency operators can see your location and they only see it if you press the emergency button.

Many other medical alert companies offer a caregiver tracking portal that lets your family or other caregivers see your location at any time.  Family and caregivers can also be notified if you have an emergency.  

Life Alert alternatives that offer caregiver tracking include Bay Alarm Medical’s SOS Mobile and Medical Guardian’s MGMini.

A caregiver portal is an important feature if your loved one has memory issues and is prone to wandering.  These portals are becoming an industry 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.

No Multi-Lingual Support

If you’re buying a medical alert for a family member who is not a native English speaker, multi-language support is a vital feature. Many competitors include support for 100 or more languages to allow their emergency operators to communicate with your loved one in their native language. Unfortunately Life Alert doesn’t offer this option. 

Life Alert Pricing

Lack of Transparent Pricing

Buyer beware: If a company doesn’t list their prices online, it means they’re expensive. It can also be a sign that pricing is arbitrarily set based on what the sales person thinks you’re willing to pay.

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 secret shoppers 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.

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.

High Startup Cost

Depending on the type of system you buy, medical alert providers charge you an initial cost.  That start up fee may be labeled as an “equipment cost,” “activation fee,” “programming fee” or something similar.  These fees typically cover the cost of the system hardware.  

Among the companies we tested, Life Alert, Lifeline, and ConnectAmerica’s MedicalAlert.com still charge a startup fee for their in-home systems, with fees ranging from $79 for ConnectAmerica to $197 for Life Alert.   

On the other hand, Bay Alarm Medical charges no such fee for their in-home system.

Life Alert has the most expensive initial cost and their $197 fee is nearly double that charged by Lifeline, who has the next highest fee.

Here’s how the equipment/activation fee compares for an in-home medical alert.

Table 1: Life Alert In-Home Startup Cost Compared to Others

For mobile GPS systems, companies charge an equipment fee ranging anywhere from $0 – $197, with the average fee being $67.18.  Two companies – Medical Guardian and MobileHelp – change no initial fee for their mobile systems, a feature we really appreciate.

Life Alert’s $197 activation fee is again the highest on the list and nearly three times the industry average fee.

Here’s how the fee compares for a GPS mobile medical alert.

Table 2: Life Alert Help On The Go Startup Cost Compared to Others

High Monthly Fees

Life Alert likewise charges high monthly fees for service, ranging from $49.95 to $69.95, depending on services. Again, since the company does not publish their pricing, we had to go through the hurdle of research to find these rates. 

Life Alerts monthly fees are the highest in the industry. For in-home medical alerts, the competitors we reviewed charge an average of $28.95 for monthly service. Life Alert’s $49.95 fee is 73% higher than that average.

Here’s how monthly monitoring fees break down between companies for a landline system.

Table 3: Life Alert In-Home Monthly Cost Compared to Others

And here’s how they compare for a GPS mobile system.

Table 4: Life Alert Help On The Go Monthly Cost Compared to Others

Total Bill: The First Year’s Cost of Ownership

Between startup costs, monthly monitoring fees, plus any optional add-ons, it can be hard to compare the true cost of a medical alert system between companies.

To make it easier to compare, we’ve calculated the true First Year Cost of Ownership for each system we review. That means we sum the startup cost (including shipping fees) with the cost for 12 months of monitoring. 

For landline systems, here’s how Life Alert compares to others.

Table 5: Life Alert Home First Year Cost Compared to Others

At a first-year cost of $796.40, Life Alert is the most expensive company on the list.  Its cost is $383.67 more than the average of our list.

Here’s how Life Alert’s Help On The Go mobile option compares to other companies.

Table 6: Life Alert Help On The Go First Year Cost Compared to Others**

(Note that to allow a fair comparison, the fees for competing systems do not include charges for automatic fall detection.)

At a whopping $1,036 first-year cost, Life Alert is $459.50 more expensive than the average.

Contract Lock-In

Life Alert requires a minimum service contract of three years. 

Among all the major medical alert system companies, Life Alert is the only one that locks its customers into a long-term contract.

Other companies give you the option of pre-pay for a quarter or a year, but they give you significantly discounted rates for doing so.  And none of them bind you into a 3-year term.

Life Alert contract period is problematic since it ties you to the company before you have a chance to see their medical alert system or experience the company’s level of service.

Sales reps have said this contract can be broken, with a penalty charge. Yet as is typical with Life Alert, there’s nothing in writing upfront to spell out the cost or the terms.

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 caused 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.

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

Pushy Sales Tactics

Life Alert has long been criticized for its pushy sales tactics. In our experience, we found their sales process to be archaic, aggressive and untruthful. 

Life Alert’s website is outdated and lacks the features you expect from a modern company. You can’t purchase a Life Alert system online, nor see information about system pricing on the website.  Notably, the company also doesn’t post its Terms of Service online, which would require them to disclose their 3-year contract lock-in. 

The LifeAlert.com website is really just an online brochure designed to get you to call the company, at which point you are fed into their sales pipeline.  

At MedicalAlertBuyersGuide.org we use secret shoppers to call the companies we review.  Our shoppers ask specific questions about the products and rate their experience with the sales team.  

In our latest test (August 2024), we called Life Alert to ask questions about the battery life of the Help On The Go + GPS system.  While we did get our questions answered, we had to sit through a 30 minute sales pitch from a “product specialist” to get our answers. 

While the product specialist was friendly and did not press us to purchase the system, he was aggressive in presenting a sales pitch that we found biased and untruthful.  For example, he claimed that Life Alert was the only company that offered a waterproof shower button, which simply is not true. 

Life Alert’s product specialist also went out of his way to trash other medical alert companies, saying “They don’t work half the time. If you drop the system, it will break. We hear that from callers every single week.”  

As an organization that has tested all of the major medical alert systems on the market, we can tell you that statement simply isn’t true.  

While some medical alert systems are clearly better than others, dropping the systems is a standard part of our test process, and we’ve never once had a system break. Likewise, we never once failed to get a call from a company’s emergency monitoring center when we pushed the “Help” button.

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.

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.

Choosing Another Medical Alert System – Your Best Options

To learn more about the other companies mentioned in this review, see the articles below.

Read this article on the best medical alert systems of 2024.

Read this review of the best in-home medical alert systems.  In-home systems are your most affordable option for a monitored medical alert at home. 

For those that leave their house and still want medical alert protection, read this review of the best mobile medical alert systems.  These modern systems are a great choice for active seniors. Many also offer caregiver tracking, which allows your loved ones to know your location at any time.For those with an active life-style, read this review for the latest on medical alert watches.  These exciting devices are the latest in personal emergency response systems.