Securitas Security Services USA

Before I can properly explain my more than interesting interaction with Securitas, I need tell you about their structure. If I have this wrong, feel free to comment and correct. I’ve researched this on the web though, and I am pretty sure I’m right. Here goes:
First, it seems like the Securitas main office or HQ is in Stockholm, Sweden. They appear to maintain offices in Germany, and they say they have an office or more in all 50 States in America. I can’t speak for the European operation.
The US is organized into two regional offices: Western, located in Westlake Village, CA and Eastern, located in Parsippany, NJ. There’s also an office in Marion, IL. Over the weekend, the Eastern Regional office takes phone calls for Marion and presumably other places as well.
I was recently asked to offer my opinion on local physical security firms, and Securitas was mentioned, so I thought I’d check them out. I had my fingerprints electronically processed by Securitas, something they do under State licensing authority, and sent to the Illinois State Police, and to the Illinois Dept. of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) — the agency that licenses nurses, doctors, and virtually all regulated professions in Illinois.
I went in to the Securitas office, had my prints run, and sent them off to the aforesaid addresses.
About three weeks later, I received a letter saying my TCN number — the number Securitas assigns when they electronically transmit your fingerprints — was invalid, and they advised me to contact Securitas.
I called the local office and was automatically transferred to their Eastern Regional offices in New Jersey. I was summarily informed that they knew nothing about fingerprints. It took about 3 repetitions to get them to acknowledge that they did offer that service, but couldn’t do anything on the weekend. Period.
Okay — I get this — some companies aren’t open on weekends, but I rarely expect this from a Security firm that promises 24÷7÷365 coverage. I explained that I was also vetting the company, so I asked for a Supervisor. Wow, what a Mistake!
The supervisor flat out wouldn’t even hear my explanation or listen to my question. Nor would she answer questions about the company. Every time I said anything she loudly interrupted. When I asked for another supervisor, she informed me she was the only one in the company today (Saturday). And then she refused once more to hear my questions about that, and hung up.
Hmmm… Okay — maybe she just responded poorly to me, or I did to her. Maybe this is just an unfortunate crashing of ships in the night. I was pretty unhappy, but I thought I’d look a little further before passing judgement, so I called the Western Region HQ. They were polite, but there were no supervisors there at all. The operator had no idea whatsoever about fingerprinting, nor did she know what to do to escalate the call. Finally, she looked up the National access number! Great! Which turned out to be the New Jersey number — the same one I called before.
Weirdly, and to my great surprise, the first supervisor really IS the only one on duty in the US on a Saturday! When I got her back on line (accidentally I assure you), she simply hung up again.
Putting personalities aside, this company was aware that I was a customer. No-​one I spoke to understood much about what Securitas does, nor were they able to politely solve even a minor problem. I have to ask myself, what if this really were an emergency? Would I have been able to get it solved by the people I spoke to? No — not a chance.
So I’m passing on my recommendation, and sharing it here with you as well. I won’t dwell on the amazing level of rudeness beyond this last comment. But I will focus on the following:
No-​one I spoke to was able to escalate a call.
No-​one understood their own corporate and communications structure
No-​one understood their product line (in fact most had no clue at all about electronic fingerprints).
No-​one was able to set up a callback on Monday. In fact I was ordered to call them «during NORMAL business hours.»
Now, I have no idea how to get this fixed and more importantly, neither do they as far as I can tell.
So I thought I’d hit the net again and see if there was a management group somewhere outside the US that I could call. And frankly I wanted to see if I really was seeing the problems I thought I was seeing. I didn’t any site that would be open. What I found instead was a remarkable number of complaints all over the net. Some of them were from venting sites. But other conservative and reputable sites also had complaints registered. Surely, some of these are over the top screeds. But I read a few that struck me as reputable. And there were so many!
These problems are, in my experience, the harbingers of a disaster, especially when they apply to a company that more than most is slated to address emergencies and disasters. I’m staying away.

I almost wanted to give them one star, but that would have definitely been driven by my anger and not entirely accurate. My experience with Securitas revolves around them acting as security for Avalon Bay apartments in Camarillo, CA. My experience with Avalon Bay hasn’t been very good either, but I wasn’t sure what the security company was that was really causing me a headache until now.
I have a friend who lives in the apartment complex. The security company begins driving around at about 9:00pm at night and places large orange stickers on the visitor cars that were not registered before 7:00pm. Now it is ridiculous that the renters have to know what guests they may have by 7:00pm because the security company needs a print out, but I suppose that is on the apartment complex rather than the security company. However, if the security company came into the 21^st century, they could have iPads or Kindle Fires even and dynamically get a list of registered visitors rather than having to get a print out of everyone registered by 7:00pm. I mean, if the visitor has to be registered online, the security company should be equipped to review registrants online. Otherwise the renters should simply be given a hotel style parking permit or print out of permits that can be put in someone’s windshield. Oh! That wouldn’t work because then the lazy security guards would have to get out of their cars to actually check to see if the visitor had a parking permit. That would be just too difficult for them to do in the land of sunshine and warm weather.
On to the large orange stickers. So the stickers can possibly be equated to vandalism. I have actually talked to a sheriff who confirmed that this could be the case, especially if it leaves lasting marks. The one I had on my car took an hour to get off, and I nearly scratched my window getting it off! Sounds like vandalism to me! They could easily put a notice under the windshield wiper, but vandalizing a car is apparently more fun.
Now let’s talk about Mike. I drove my friend home, and it was after 7:00pm. We saw the security guard who was working (Mike), and my friend said that he was really sorry but he had not been able to register me before 7:00pm, and I was driving him home, so could he take note of my car and not leave a sticker. Mike decided to immediately get combative with my friend. Come on, Mike! Really? My friend was perfectly pleasant, and simply asking that he add me manually to the print out since he couldn’t go register me anymore! Then I went over to see what was happening, and it seemed apparent that Mike had a couple drinks. He didn’t appear drunk, but I could smell alcohol, and his behavior seemed telling of having had a few drinks. My friend later commented to me that he had believed he had been drinking as well. So let me get this straight. You are going to vandalize my car while driving around as a security guard after drinking? Again, come on, Mike!
All I’m saying is that there are few things they could do to be better. After I left a security guard from another company (I wish I could remember which one) made a big effort to get my attention to tell me my taillight was out. (Turns out I had bumped my lights, and it wasn’t out, but that was still nice of him to basically alert me that my lights were off.) With competition like that, Securitas should make some changes and hire better personnel.
Here are some suggestions for change.
1. Stop using stickers and vandalizing cars!
2. Come into the 21^st century and get tablets so that permits can be updated dynamically.
3. Get better employees who don’t drink on the job, and then verbally attack people and try to provoke altercations.

I have worked with Securitas for almost 10 years. My experience at the corporate level has been excellent — and I am a woman. Securitas employees are dedicated to getting the job done. I’m not sure about the incident reported on the intial report, perhaps bad seed at one location. I say two thumbs up for Securitas. They have a hard job but, from my experience, they are fair and handle situations (at least with their employees) in a just way.