This SOUNDED like such an awesome idea. No keyfob to carry, unlimited range...price was a bit more than a traditional remote start, and annual service fees, but that seemed ok for the benefits.
Except that it only works about 25% of the time. It's not that you think the car is started, but it's not, it's very good about telling you when the start command is received by the car or not...it's just that it fails to send the command. My experience is no amount of retrying is going to make it work either, I've spent 30+ minutes hitting the button over and over (takes about a minute to timeout) and never had success. Either it works, or it's not going to work. The installer shop suggested I add on an antenna and keyfob remote since the cellphone interface is so unreliable. So I can pay MORE, and get less functionality...awesome.
I've seen other reports of people claiming they were told they've oversold capacity and can't keep up...but last I checked, they're STILL selling units and taking money, so I can't imagine things getting any better.
EDIT 2/24/12
Wanted to update this earlier one star review because it's no longer accurate.
Viper has addressed whatever network issues they were having and now reliability is excellent for me. I still get "failure to connect" maybe 5% of the time, but a retry usually works.
One oddity, the "failure to connects" were at the 100% mark a few months ago, and when I gave up and contacted support, they sent me a link to download a special version of the app for my phone (EVO 4G) and all problems went away. Viper support has actually been pretty good.
All that being said, I'm updating my review to 4 stars. It's an excellent system when it works, and currently it's working great.
Support is non-existent. Once I was told "we've reset your system, it works now" and nothing changed. Two other requests for support went ignored.
It's a bit frustrating when you buy something like this so you won't have to scrape your windows and get into a cold car in the morning...and then you have to scrape your windows and get into a cold car. the only difference is now I've paid a lot of money for the privilege.