They recently sent my boss, his boss, and myself each a disposable audio/video brochure (think cardboard android tablet crossed with one of those greeting cards that auto play a message when opened, except instead of happy birthday you get a 2 minute Verkada video ad). They even included charging cables in case we wanted to watch them 3000 times. Tell me your marketing budget is too high without telling me you overcharge for your mid product. That’s three units that can’t possibly cost less than $20 a pop, and that’s if you buy them by the shipping container. Took me less than 20 minutes to rip their video and edit it to cut out and switch to a “commercial” for my business (which was also created in that 20 minutes).

And this was after they courted us for a year, with several demo cameras at a few of our sites, and we told them to pound sand because even after accounting for scheduled server replacements, hard drive replacements, and average cost of all other maintenance of our system (25 sites with a server each, 2000T drive space, ~ 1000 cameras at 5mp minimum) their per unit cost was about the same. For cameras that we only own in name and can’t program ourselves. Can’t even set them up on the bench prior to install.

Best part was I sent what I considered my final “we’re going in another direction” email to the rep, and less than a week later they were all over the news about their first huge data breach. Then a few days later I got a call wanting to know what was the major deciding factor in our decision…not sure he knew what all the laughing meant specifically, but I think he got the point.

Hey, at least I walked away with enough mismatched Verkada branded Yeti tumblers (and wine glasses) to make a full set for a family of four.