Rating: 
Monthly Cost: $49.00
Setup Fee: $300
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The Bottom Line
We do not recommend getting Life Alert. Even though Life Alert is the most well known of all the medical alert systems, there are many problems with it, including incredibly restrictive contracts, high prices, high-pressure sales tactics, and numerous consumer complaints.
Detailed Review
Ease of Use: 
Like most medical alert devices, Life Alert is a one button system that will alert a medical monitoring center if you fall down or have an accident. Their device is primarily worn as a pendant, but like both Lifestation and LifeFone there is also a wristband version for greater convenience. There aren’t a lot of value added features (911 phone built into the device, like Lifestation has), but their unit is simple and does the job.
The process of getting a Life Alert system, however, proves to be much more difficult than many of their competitors. You can’t order online, so you are forced to call in and speak with their sales reps, who will then typically use high pressure sales tactics to try to get you to sign up right away. Unpleasant to say the least. See Customer Complaints for more information about this.
Price: 
This is by far the weakest point of the Life Alert system. It costs nearly double what both LifeStation and LifeFone cost: for a monthly contract with Life Alert, you should expect to pay a minimum of $49. There are no significant discounts to be had either, so this is generally the cheapest that you will pay . Moreover, there is a $300 activation fee, unlike the two above-mentioned competitors who don’t have any activation fees.
The most troubling part, however, is how Life Alert chooses to sell its product. Unlike many of their competitors, they have extremely restrictive contract terms: you can’t cancel the service for 3 years after you first sign up, and there are many stories of people trying to cancel for very legitimate reasons and being rudely denied. What’s more worrying is that many of these people seemed to have no idea that there was any 3 year contract – only realizing after trying to cancel months or years into the supposed contract term!
Dependability: 
In this respect, there isn’t too much to fault with Life Alert. Although their equipment is somewhat dated, they have a good track record of servicing their customers properly, and sending medical help quickly. At the same time, they do not specifically claim to have their monitoring centers in the US, which means that they may in fact be outsourcing the calls, so one should make note of that before considering working with them.
Overall Rating:
We would recommend that you avoid getting a Life Alert. Their higher price and dated equipment, combined with their unscrupulous sales practices, make them a much less appealing choice than companies like LifeStation or LifeFone. While Life Alert may be one of them most well known medical alert companies, don’t let that fool you: they are simply not worth the money or the stress.
Customer Complaints
We had to include a separate section on the numerous complaints about Life Alert’s customer service, high-pressure sales tactics, and long-term restrictive contracts. Take a look at what actual customers have to say about Life Alert, taken from Life Alert complaints at Consumer Affairs:
My mother who lived alone was a Life Alert customer, who never needed their service for any reason. Now that my mother lives with me in a different city, she has no use for the Life Alert system. When I contacted them to cancel the service, I was told that she had to remain a customer for another year and deductions from her bank account would continue whether she uses the unit or not. I promptly contacted the bank to have the automatic withdrawals canceled and I was told that Life Alert would have to grant permission for the deductions to stop! Life Alert is taking advantage of senior citizens.
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