Lively Link Reviews

My mother was unable to install the lanyard which I understand is a companywide problem. Others could not do it either. Our daughter from Chicago did it for her but the magnet broke and the lanyard did not stay closed and the daughter was not present to help. They sent a replacement lanyard but my mom's fingers couldn't depress a small square on the back of the unit so she couldn't replace the old with the new lanyard. We were on the phone with someone from Great Call who admitted this was a general problem. The company is unable for some unknown reason, to pre install the lanyard. I was very upset my 92 year old mom was left without a lanyard and they are expecting IRMA a cat. 5 hurricane to hit Florida this week. I would not recommend this alert system unless they fix the LANYARD issue.

I’m into my 3rd day and the Lively Link app has only updated the location of the linked phone twice. A manual location refresh doesn’t work, and two calls to support didn’t help either. Support told me they “refreshed the link” to the phone and my account and was instructed to logout and login back in after two hours. After that did nothing, I was then told the phone needs an update, but I know everything was already updated, as I just setup up the phone and updated everything, and it’s never worked correctly. After questioning when the update came out, the service representative quickly said “thanks for calling in” and hung up. Seems like I need to find a new service… Very disappointed so far.

Pushed my button. Immediately said a White male was in my yard, coming at me. She had to KNOW every detail FIRST before contacting 911. The guy is running toward me. I don’t have time to give details when running. Also, SHE personally did NOTneed the particulars. JUST START A POLICE CAR !!!! EVERYTIME I have had an emergency they have done this. The purpose of having the Device is to GET help STARTED not have a conversation. I laid it done and called 911 myself. What if I were unconscious or dead by this FELON’s hands and she’s still talking !! She doesn’t need to know the details at this point, UNTIL SHE KNOWS that I am alright and safe. Just get me help. My small kept nipping at his heels until he backed him out of the yard until he jumped over my fence and ran. Had the nearby Police dept and My local Police deptand the County Sherrif dept with their dogs, I would have been in my back yard with him. They were a block away, hunting him for a stolen truck in the neighboring City. What a shame! I felt protected by having this device and now I know I am NOT SAFE, Nor protected and I can get better response by ME calling 911. The only thing good about it was when GreatCall answered me, audibly, he thought I had. Line to the Police. What a shame! And I pay good money for this.

App crashing consistently-have not been able to access since activating the device for my mother one week ago—customer service is clueless, also no information (no location service or battery strength) available on the desktop version despite my being logged in): seems like a very basic service that is promising other benefits and not delivering; I think this company had a recent rebranding; something has been lost—will be discontinuing my account with them

Addendum as of JAN 1–still no response from lively link regarding the lack of ability to see my moms location, battery level at all— there is zero customer service—when you call lively, customer service says they are not responsible for LivelyLink —and I cannot find out who is—I am going to cancel—it does not have the functionality it promises at all!

I cannot for the life of me figure out how the ratings are this high unless they are fake!

We have a button that my Mom wears around her neck. It’s caused her and us quite a bit of frustration because battery doesn’t last through an entire day and there’s no way to quickly swap it out for a fresh one. We ended up ordering a new one hoping it might last longer but it had trouble during setup. Tech support advised her to do a hard reboot which requires two buttons to be pressed at the same time, but her hands are weak and she doesn’t have the dexterity to do it herself. It’s simply. It just not senior friendly. Last complaint is LivelyLink . I found it clunky and unreliable. It is supposed to show the batter life, mom’s location, and whether she’s had any events. The information was rarely accurate and available when I checked it. So all in all, I would not suggest this system unless you have someone nearby that can help, which kind of defeats the purpose of allowing us to be away from our Mom and have peace of mind that she’s okay.

LivelyLink is inadequate if you’re trying to track someone in a vehicle. We experienced an emergency situation where our mother got disoriented and was lost for a number of hours. Great Call only updated her position roughly every 20-25 minutes. If your loved one is on foot that’s probably good enough. If they’re in an automobile there’s literally no way to locate them unless they stop and stay in one place for over 25 minutes.

We called Great Call and notified them this was an emergency situation. They stated that heir software only allowed even THEM to update her position every 25 minutes or so. There was NOTHING they could do.
LIFE 360 app is far superior, but requires an iPhone. Please keep in mind the significant limitations of LivelyLink when your loved ones’ welfare is on the line.

Please be advised that if your loved one falls down , 5 star is activated, then your loved one moves and mistakenly depresses the button again with their body positioning 5 STAR WILL NOT CONTACT EMERGENCY SERVICES,5STAR WILL NOT TRY TO CONTACT YOUR INJURED LOVED ONE AND WILL NOT CONTACT THE EMERGENCY CONTACTS. Yes, this is true, my father had this happen and was by himself, broken shoulder, and 5Star never even activated his device to ask if he was ok. He lay outside injured and unable to move for over an hour before a stranger found him. 5 Star supervisor confirmed that yes, this is their policy. So please, prevent a similar tragedy happening to your loved one ( we never know exactly what position they’ll fall in and how they’ll move after they’ve fallen) and know that this device will be useless and the company firmly backs their policy regarding this type of fall. Please choose another device for your loved one so they do not need to suffer as my father did.

Has gone from excellent to TRASH. Have been a very happy user for FOUR YEARS until lately. Am still researching, talking with tech support, and am actually riding around to field test problems. We used to get 95%+ success in locating wearer. Now we get maybe 10% success. Same house. Same car. Same town. Same frequent destinations. Small town. No new developments. There is a Verizon tower about 2 and 1/2 miles from house. It appears the issue is that the Lively Mobile device is 3G technology and what Verizon tells me is it gets lowest priority on 4G towers so it will be slower and slower to update and may get shut out entirely during more busy times. That explains why sometimes ( rarely now) it succeeds in seconds and other times ( more frequently) it tries forever and still fails. As more towers convert to 4G these other reviewers that are singing it's praises as I once did will be left behind as well. As per just LivelyLink , it too is flawed. The info it gives you does NOT really mean what it says. It could be HOURS old yet it tells you wearer was at a location, say, 10 minutes ago. It simply IGNORES all the failed attempts. There is more; that's just one example. I may update after field test. System is failing. App doesn't account for failure thus making it inaccurate.

My sister and I have been told varying reasons as to why LivelyLink doesn’t update real time. My sister was told it was because of her wireless carrier however her and I are with different carriers (metropcs and at&t). I was told it was just not able to update in real-time.

Our father fell in his bathroom of the independent living facility where he resides. Emergency services were dispatched around 5:30 am yet LivelyLink didn’t notify her until 7:15! Both my sister and I called great call to try and locate my father. I was told EMS had NOT been called. Neither my sister or I were called to be informed of the emergency. It took them 9 days to get back to me to explain why! I was told it was their error and they were sorry! Really? I would be leery of using this service for your loved one as they may not notify you until it’s too late! Terrible service

First, I hardly ever got accurate alerts, then they did an update and I was getting a notification about once an hour all night long, and all day! All alerts that she was home! Then there was an update and I was hoping it would fix the constant barrage! Oh no! It made it worse! I now get 12 notifications at one time saying she is home! And then an hour later, 8 notifications in a row saying she is home! I don’t want to turn the notifications off, because I do want to know when there is a change from the normal! But when the alerts are constantly going off, am I going to even notice it when there is an actual issue? We do all remember the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf?!

The first device we received from this company worked great... for 4 months. The company did troubleshooting with us and decided it was a faulty unit and would immediately send a replacement. Two weeks later, no unit. Called the company and after a bit of persuading, they agreed to send replacement (said they had no record of our previous 3 conversations). the new unit’s locator was off by 6/10 of a mile. Called yesterday and they did a location update Right now it shows my mom in the middle of the woods a mile away . I need to see her correct location. Will call again today, but also looking at other options. Really disappointing because her first one worked so well.

We got the Lively to help Mom be more independent. We liked that we would receive notifications when she left home, returned, forgot to charge device, fell or called for help. We were also supposed to be able to “search” for her. For awhile we did receive notifications. Then the would come hours after the event(she would be home before we even were notified that she was out). Now we get nothing. Even the weekly updates are inaccurate often saying she is out 1x a week when I’ve had her out several while she was wearing the charged unit. Undependable for notifications. Since mom has not had a true emergency, I don’t even know if that works. My advice...keep looking for better option

We kept getting multiple notifications every day saying my MIL was at a certain location when we knew that wasn’t true - especially when we were with her at the time. Customer service said to delete any locations within 2 miles of her home base as that could be a problem. She’s 87 years old for crying out loud! Every place she goes is within 2 miles of her house! I kept deleting locations one by one until there were none left and we STILL get multiple notifications per day saying she is in a location I deleted from her profile 4 months ago. I have uninstalled and reinstalled LivelyLink from my iPhone and iPad and pc many times without a resolution. We just gave up. At least the fetching current location feature seems to work.

Sometimes it is ok, others not at all. My mom' s device was powered off for over a week, losing charge. Never notified it was off. Weekly summary merely said that she only wore it three days during the week. Nonsensical (and hokey) wording for what really occurred.
Another emergency situation she pushed the button and the tech had not taken adequate notes and they could not tell us what had happened. Location on the device was not registering for HOURS either so we had no way of knowing where she had been taken. Thankfully she was ok, but if it had been serious, we had no way to reach her. Her cell phone was left in the car when she was taken by ambulance. Technology does not seem to be a vein that of a standard smartphone.
Will be looking for a new service soon.

1. Never shows current location, just where Mom was 50 minutes ago! (Useless location information)
2. Every time we call C/S they recommend a hard reboot! (Difficult for Seniors losing fine motor skills)
3. App only refreshes after device has been rebooted!
4. When tapping the “refresh” button on LivelyLink (iPhone 6+ w/ all updates) it NEVER refreshes. Just keeps spinning even if using high speed Wifi !
5. C/S Reps- some are good - others talk WAY too fast to be of any help to an 85 yr old w/ hearing aids! Even when asked to slow down :(
6. Mom was lost for 4 hours and we couldn’t find her!!! Neither could LivelyLink !!!

7. Today is 20 Oct 2020. LivelyLink says battery status from October 16. It was charged (again) today and LivelyLink STILL says check device status :(

Closed & re-opened app. No update. Deleted & reinstalled app. No update.
Rebooted cell phone. No update. iPhone is up to date & LivelyLink is as well. Still says check device status.

8. TWO calls to customer service were dropped in the middle of trouble shooting. Neither agent called us back. Very concerning since this is supposed to be a MEDICAL ALERT DEVICE! What if our elderly parent called for help ? Would that call drop too? I suspect so, sadly.

9. We are in a large town. Not in the sticks. I wonder why the calls keep dropping?!?!?

10. Data should update every 20 minutes according to app description. It’s been 30 minutes now since the last update :( Very disappointing.

My husband and I love having a way to keep up with his Mother who is 84. I do find the location updates are slow and I miss updates on when she is on the move.
However, LivelyLink is much better than not knowing where she is and how she is.
For instance, after five weeks of having her new phone she suddenly failed to charge the battery. We were notified and during our check on her, learned she had taken too much of one of her medicines. Lifesaving! Thank you!

It has been helpful, being able to mostly keep up with my family members whereabouts. We do not use all the features such as notifications about his medications and doctors appointments though I have suggested that to him. The price is not particularly expensive and it has been worth it, however sometimes it is not accurate. For some reason on occasion it lists his location as being in the Bronx zoo when he is not there. At first I thought perhaps he had driven by there and was somewheres nearby on the road but this was not the case; for a few days it actually seem to be the default for his location erroneously. Not sure what that was all about but it has not happened for a while seems that occurred over the course of a few days.

I purchased a Lively Mobile for my husband, an active 86 year old. He loves to be busy in the garden, lawn or tending to a healthy farm pond.
Since I am concerned about a fall or heart issue, I persuaded him to wear the device.
We’ve had it about two weeks, and I have tried unsuccessfully to install LivelyLink on my phone. My problem was that I had an old app and it’s information from an app connected to my mom and her Lively mobile.
That had to be completely deleted. An email invite had to be sent to an address not connected already with the device. Then, follow the instructions, and all is well! So far, anyway!
Thanks for all your help.

I bought this flip phone for my 94 year old mother! She loves it because it’s easier to use than her old flip phone. But, what she loves most about it is that she can hear (and I can hear her) so much better than her old phone.
What I love most is when a month ago she was really dizzy and she used “the button “ to reach help. They contacted 911 and she was taken to the hospital. They also contacted me that she had pushed “the button “!
I also love LivelyLink ! I know where she is and if the battery is charged! She is better now and back living independently in her home! She and I both feel she is still okay on her own especially now because of her phone and of course, “the button “!

Happy with service and customer support has always been easy to work with. Unit operates as expected with all features- really like the GPS feature so you can keep track of loved ones and provides peace of mind when they are out. You should test the unit in the area you live to make sure cell reception is okay for minimal issues. This device should be considered by everyone, young and old- I think about if I had a health emergency, whould I be able to get to my phone and dial 911when time is of the essence?