How do you choose a smart-home installer in Malaysia?

What should you ask before signing?

Ask about the protocol, the outage behaviour, the wiring, the quotation, the warranty and future expansion. These six can be answered in a first meeting, and vague answers to any of them are themselves informative. They are also the same six answers Tekovate gives, unprompted, in its own first meetings in Melaka.

• Which protocol does the system use, and is it an open standard? Open standards are what keep you from being locked to one supplier.
• What still works when the internet is down? A system that goes dark in an outage is a cloud service, not home automation.
• Who does the wiring, and are they part of the same company? Split responsibility is where blame goes when something does not work.
• What is inside the quoted price, and what gets billed later? Ask for the exclusions in writing, not the inclusions.
• Are there recurring fees, annual software charges or subscriptions?
• Can it be extended room by room later, and with whose products?

What are the red flags?

A quotation that cannot say what it excludes. An installer who will not name the protocol. A system that needs a working internet connection to switch a light. A proprietary ecosystem that can only ever be extended by the company that sold it to you. A price given before anyone has seen the property. Tekovate publishes this list precisely because every item on it is checkable anywhere in Malaysia before any money moves.

What should a first meeting produce?

A site visit, then a design and a quotation within 2-3 days, at no charge, which is exactly how Tekovate runs it. If a company quotes a fully automated home without visiting the property, the number is a guess and will move later.

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