Property Managers Give It To Us Straight: Top Beefs About Card and Fob Access Systems

Paul Bodell, VIZpin CEO

It’s no secret among property managers that the security industry is not very service-centric. Many installers focus on winning the job, installing a bunch of on-premise equipment, and then move on. If there’s a problem with a system after the initial grace period, tough luck. Get ready for the time and materials costs to begin adding up.

But it’s not just the installers that managers have a beef with; they have an issue with traditional card and fob systems themselves. In developing our smartphone cloud-based access control system, we took the time to speak to many end users to find out the top the reasons they are so unhappy. Here is what we heard:

Residential Property Managers

• “The systems are too complicated. The on-site manager spends way too much time figuring out how to use it when he should be renting units.”
• “We have high turnover and no-one ever sends their (RFID) cards back. It’s not only the card costs that are an issue, it’s the time it takes to delete the old cards from the system and add new ones.”
• “We have 400 tenants and probably spend 15 minutes a year for each tenant with our current system. That is a lot of time – 100 hours – which comes out of my pocket.”

Commercial Property Managers

• “Fobs are a pain in the neck. Our tenants are always losing them or forgetting them, which is frustrating for them and forces us to stop what we are doing to help them out.”
• “We’re not sure how long we’ll be in this space and didn’t want to make a huge up-front investment if we are going to be moving soon.”
• “We found out that if we wanted our two-year-old system to have the latest features, we had to get a system upgrade that cost almost 10% of what we originally paid for the system.”
• “Our new IT guy won’t allow third party hardware on our network, so now we have to put in a separate network and ISP for our access control system.”

We took all of these concerns into consideration when we developed VIZpin, which is why these are some of the top reasons residential and commercial property managers are switching to our cloud-based, keyless access control system:

• When you sign up for VIZpin service, you are guaranteed to have the latest, greatest features at no additional charge
• Every VIZpin PLUS account includes 500 VIZpin keys/credentials
• The installation of a VIZpin system costs a fraction of what a card/reader system costs to install even with the annual PLUS service, which is especially important if you may move offices in the next few years
• Users who lose their phones can securely transfer the keys to a new phone without having to contact the system administrator

What is your top beef with your current car/FOB system? Email info@VIZpin.com and we’d be happy to tell you how VIZpin addresses it.