"alarms do not go off reliably" as in they don't play? The clock doesn't auto-launch? Are you using the same sound file all the time, or?

If it's the "clock doesn't autolaunch/do anything at alarm time" then you can always fall back on Flip's internal alarms instead of alarmD;
Make sure you have all alarms in Flip TURNED OFF, then just edit the config file (/home/user/.flipclock) and look for the section that says "useAlarmD=1"; change that to 0, save, and you should be all set. Note that this approach will no longer cause auto-launches/etc and means you'll need to have the app running in order to get alarms, but it should at least be 100% consistent.