Avidia

Long story short, Avidia installs garbage tech and significantly hikes your purchase price of that garbage tech to make a ridiculous profit. Their installation work is also extremely shoddy, at best. Longer story: Had two friends who hired Avidia, both are fairly wealthy and not educated regarding tech. They had both recommended Avidia to me. I had asked Avidia for an estimate to wire and install tech throughout our new home. Their estimate was north of $80k. I had agreed to let them to do the initial wiring for $5k. The work they did was the following: 1) installed CAT 5 wiring instead of CAT 6. 2) They had failed to install the wiring in the correct location (was supposed to be under the stairs vs. the mechanical room on the other side of the house). 3) The wires were cut short by 10 feet, which required EVERY wire to be spliced instead of having one full line to the end. 4) Some of those spliced wires didn't work and almost half were mislabeled, which caused havoc when third-party vendors (like Comcast) had to come out and set things up. 5) Finally, Avidia complained that I was delaying payment until the wires were spliced and work was completed. After the first traunch of work looked to be so questionable, I had a close friend, who does all the IT work for a Fortune 100 company here in Chicago, review their estimate north of $80k and list of tech for my home. He told me that it was quite clear that Avidia was installing only the bare minimum quality TVs, speakers, wiring, etc. and marking up the hardware to ridiculous profits, considering I could purchase higher quality tech at much cheaper prices. With this information, I asked my friend to drive over to my two other friends' houses to review the work Avidia had completed there. Again, he pointed out each and every mistake, focusing also on the installed tech, which was the worst versions to be installed (the wiring disallowed any future upgrade since the wiring was specific only to that particular tech--speakers, TVs, etc.). The owners were pretty ****** off because they said they had never been told of the limiting factors of what was installed. The TVs that Avidia installed were also some of the worst (luckily the owners just replaced them after seeing my Sony OLED, which cost less than what Avidia had charged for their garbage, smaller HDTVs). At any rate, after getting an estimate north of $80k from Avidia, I went with a friend of mine who did all the work that Avidia was going to do but with MUCH higher quality equipment, and it only cost $38k total. Whenever I hear that anyone is considering Avidia, I always tell them this story. Buyer beware. Their entire business model is to jack prices on unsuspecting homeowners. They put on a great show in their show room, but that certainly comes at a price. Luckily, I only lost $5k to them. And they bought this review for it. If you're clueless about tech, feel free to get a quote from Avidia, but I strongly suggest that you get a second and even third opinion. I cringe every time I think about that experience and my friends' experiences. Don't let the same thing happen to you. Do your homework and you'll save a considerable amount (with better tech).

I had a fantastic experience with Avidia from start to finish on a complex project that included a complete renovation of my home theater, installation of multiple Ring devices around my entire house, and re-doing my home network to boost the WiFi signal. Special thanks to the owner, Matthew, for spending a ton of time with me up-front to help me find the perfect solution for all parts of this project. Also special thanks to Kamil for overseeing the project as it went along. And, finally, special thanks to Peter for doing a lot of the work up-front that laid the ground for this project and to Artur for completing the final install of all of the equipment. Everything works perfect and we especially love our new home theater! We will be using Avidia again soon and I highly recommend them!

We went with Avidia because we felt they did the best job of understanding our wants/needs and determining an appropriate project scope. This was a big project, and I was impressed with them from start to finish. Every step was clearly communicated so I knew to expect next. Every employee I met was friendly, professional, and went above and beyond to make sure we were happy. The work was done to an exceedingly high standard (and I'm stickler when it comes to tiny details) and we're already using and enjoying the system they installed for us. As new homeowners, we have used many contractors over the past few months, and none have been as easy to work with and exceeded our expectations like Avidia. We're already thinking of what to do next with them!

The project was great and Avidia really knows how to make the process easy and enjoyable. Not only can I access my lights and temperature controls remotely, but Avidia set them up on timers to control when my lights can come on, use a % of the lights and also not waste energy when we are out of the house. Coming home and having the lights and temp set as I walk in the door is such a nice efficient way to come and also I feel safer by having the lights on a time schedule as well. We would highly recommend using Avidia and getting home automation pieces added to your new or existing home. We are definitely looking at Audio solutions for our next step.