Re: Paying customer wakes up to CF alarm every morning

[brettjbyers@xxxxxxxxx]

Wow....you are passionate about the alarm business.  And even more so
about pointing blame at people you do not even know and with just
partial context.  There is a lot under the surface there, but this is
just an alarm system group so I will keep it at that.  THEREFORE: This
response is intended for others the quality of service some alarm
companies will go through to help get VOIP issues sorted out, as they
know they will be instinct if they don't.  Thie is just one example of
a company who used me as a training ground for their [VOIP] educated
Techs to work through an installation.  As a pre-note, the first tech
who came to my house did know what VOIP was- he may have just been new
on the job, so I spent some time walking through it with him,

A year into having my Brinks alarm system, I installed Vonage VOIP and
let Brinks remain on a regular line. I called Brinks to see if my alarm
would work via Vonage; At the time the market was newer but they were
happy to send someone over at no cost (plus I have the support plan and
never have "my failt" things like this prevented them from coming out
to service me.  The Brinks techs spent must the day trying to sort it
out and although still did not get it working, they thanked me for
calling them in because I was one of the first in the area and they
want to get more experience working with these. So it became a quest
for them to get this sorted out before the inevitable calls starting
coming in as mainstram VOIPs like vonage start popping up and Best Buy
and other mass retailers.  A few weeks later they brought a special
adapter Brinks just purchased to help solved this problem.  It worked
for a while but then no more.  Brinks worked with Vonage on the
communication protocols or how it is configured and the service was a
bit on and off. They continued to send technicians out a couple times
to work through it.  Again, they were happy I was being their
real-world guinea pig as some of these adapters were so new the Brinks
installer did not even have instructions.  So... I asked for a credit
for a few months of monitoring because they were very interested in
getting it working, and I was patient with them to see if they could.
So... I could have activated my landline for $20 and saved myself
numerous visits and a non-functioning alarm I paid hundreds for.  So.
Why the credit you ask?  I think that their using my house as a
training platform local Brinks staff to get up to speed on VIOP (and
using new provided adapters with no instructions) and allowing them
test installations and troubleshootings is certainly worth a service
credit of $35 for the past three months.  If you could deploy a new
production alarm environment in a residential real-world setting, allow
your teams to learn how the technology works, understand their
mysterous (instructionless) adapters where they did not know which end
was up, and build a case study.... all for $105 in SOFT cost (simply 3
months of service which my system did no work), that is reasonable by
any standard.  If you disagree, then we both know you are not
reasonable but I will not ask for a credit for taking the time to
education you on that.  :)  half-kidding :)