Veni, Vidi, Vivint

I came, I saw, I stole their customers. Vivint has been having a rough time of it lately with multiple lawsuits hanging above its head, one of which already resolved decidedly not in their favor.

It might be important to examine the root cause of this problem which is that it looks like Vivint doesn’t like to share. Most of these lawsuits specifically would term it deceptive business practices. At the end of the day Vivint saw some customers that weren’t theirs and decided to change that, illegally.

More than once.

A lot of times, actually.

That’s not hyperbole either; it’s a settled legal issue at this point. ADT won a lawsuit for this same thing in 2018 ($10 million, fined for $20 million in 2021 by the Federal Trade Commission, settled with the U.S. Department of Justice for $3 million the same year), and only a few weeks ago CPI Security Systems took home an obscene judgment of $189.7 million. I don’t know offhand how much money they made over a period of time sniping that revenue from other companies, but it surely couldn’t have been enough to offset that. Moreover, they’re now being sued by another company, Alert 360. They’re alleging that Vivint salespeople showed up at customers doors claiming Alert 360 was going out of business, or that they were there on behalf of Alert 360, before installing Vivint hardware.

Wow, woof, that’s real bad biscuits, and to quote a certain cartoon, bad biscuits make the baker broke, bro. Baked goods aside, they’re up for sale currently to NRG Energy Inc. out of Houston. There’s as much as $2.8 billion in cash on the table for that deal and I’m itching to know what they think of the situation. Does $189.7 million even register to them with that much cash on the line? Maybe not, but I bet they’re looking nervously at all these other past and ongoing lawsuits and asking themselves if they’re about to buy an expensive lemon. How many other judgments will NRG find themselves paying out of pocket for? I don’t know, and they don’t know either I’ll bet.

It begs the question if there’s anyone from the industry in as much hot water as Vivint seems to be. Latch, maybe, has anybody made an offer to buy them yet?   

Is anyone STILL buying Vivint?