Re: False alarms

["Jim" <alarminex@xxxxxxx>]

Everywhere Man wrote:
> petem wrote:
> > My opinion is plain simple,you have some really good nerv to come here and
> > talk about giving fine to installing alarm company. <
>
> Well if it's good nerv to discuss my opinion on false alarms then my
> thanks. It beats bad nerv. Bickering about who is to blame isn't going
> to reduce false alarms anymore than fining the customer would.
> One company in Mount Vernon had 600+ (six hundred) false alarms. At
> what point does it become our responsibility to shut the guy off so we
> don't allow the customer to drive up the false alarm rate? When the
> concept of no response is being toyed with that should be enough of a
> warning that the police have had enough. Unless we are all going to
> employ armed guards this should be of major concern to us.
> The police can say whatever the hell they want about how they respond
> like every alarm is a real emergency but that's a crock of crap. Alarm
> calls are becoming more and more of a low priority.

I'm sure you already know this but no one has said it yet:

Fining the alarm companys is no different than fining the  end user.
there are bad alarm installers and bad end users. As you well know
there are some end users that you can spend an hour with explaining the
system and 15 minutes later they wont remember a thing much less a year
or more later. There is many times one or more people in a household
that really don't WANT to grasp the seriousness of false alarms in the
community. You install as system in a home with a young child of 12 in
the family. Three years later your dealing with a teenager who just
doesn't give a crap whether the cops are called or not.

On the other side there are alarm companys who don't do all that they
could to cut down on the number of false signals. I've been able to
keep my down below 1% for years but let me tell you it's a struggle
with constant log keeping and follow up telephone calls. There are some
who just always have an excuse for the reason why a false alarm
occured. "Oh it was PROBABLY this or that or an IDONKNOW what happened.
Some I've had to lengthen exit/entrance delays. Eliminate motion
sensors and so on. One thing I'll say though ....the very fact that
they know I'm going to call them after a false signal, has an effect on
the reduction of false signals. I've seen that happen often. Every time
I call it's a chance for a review for them to learn something about the
system that they've forgotten or just never retained from day one.

>
> >
> > What you dont know is that,here we have so much fly by night company that
> > there is no way just to know who the heck installed a system.. <
>
> And we have the same here. We have companies MAILING customers alarm
> systems.
> Maybe fines against the company isn't the answer, I doubt we will ever
> know for sure, but fining the end user sure as all shit hasn't worked
> yet.
>
> >
> > You will need to think also about poeple that badly use there alarm,not
> > because they ar mean,but cause the forget,they didnt close the windows of
> > the kitchen and at the first good wind gust the pir gave an alarm,now wheres
> > the alarm company fault,how could they have prevented that alarm? by
> > installing contact on every door? <
>
> If the customer had a better understanding about the system they
> wouldn't continually make these mistakes. How often do these same
> people forget to lock their doors, or put on a seat belt? The NBFAA and
> FARA have a pretty decent suggestion that we use here. It's a 7 day no
> dispatch policy. For the first 7 days there will be no dispatch on
> alarms because the majority of user errors occur right after install.
> With a 7 day no dispatch the customer won't fear using their system,
> and might become more comfortable learning the features. Unfortunately
> not everyone offers that and that contributes to user error.
>
> >


You know what it is. The very fact that a system is used every day
..... day in and day out, with out considering any of the the things
that may set it off ..... is, I think, a major reason the end user is
the cause of most false signals. Consider...... for months and months
after a system is installed, a system can be armed and disarmed and not
a thought given about the conditions that must be met and considered
when using an alarm system . You can give all the warnings and
precautions that you want when you turn the sytem over to them but
after months and months and months ..... even years of using the system
with out having to consider any thing like party balloons, leaving a
fan on, forgetting to put the cat downstairs, checking the basement
window you had open over the weekend and a thousand other things, after
awhile, people just get so used to punching in their numbers and
walking out, that the number of false alarms actually goes UP for a
period of time, until they are reminded by having me call them
repeatedly. This is much more of a deterrent to false alarms than
having central call them at work, ( too late to do anything about it
now and to busy with work problems, to worry about my alarm now)  and
the police show up at a residence with no one home.



> > i f so you are saying that alarm system should only be install on high end
> > home where they can afford full perimeter and volumetric protection <
>
> No Pete I am not saying that. I am talking about nimrods who aim motion
> detectors at stairways, and at windows. Goofballs who use 30 year old
> wiring rather than charge the customer for new wiring. Dingbats who
> install single tech motions, and don't caulk behind it, or don't
> instruct their clients to vacuum around the motion and smoke detectors
> on a monthly basis. Installers who don't teach the customer how to test
> the system weekly. Jackasses who sell DIY systems and offer monitoring
> without ever inspecting the system.
> These fly-by-nighters that you are talking about are the reason we are
> all paying the price. A quality install does not necessarily mean a
> full perimeter system. It means use quality regardless of the system
> size.
> I would bet my left nut that Jim (Alarminex) doesn't have a false alarm
> rate anywhere near 99%. What makes him different? Quality! Think Jack
> Stevens has a rate like that?
> Now for every Jack Stevens, and Jim there are HUNDREDS of slimebags who
> don't use quality. Bob Campbell always mentions a Canuck company that
> offers nothing but garbage. I can't recall the name, but they are not a
> small company. Frankie and Mikey always mention them too. They
> advertise low rates on the radio. If they were to be fined for every
> false alarm how long would they hang around muddying the waters for the
> rest of us? Now what company contributes more to the problem? Would it
> be that large company or Jack Stevens? Now who ends up paying the
> larger price for it? Jack Stevens. Why? Because our industry gets a
> black eye from these scumbags and he now becomes guilty by association.
> I'm just using Jack and Jim (Roger Grimsby) as two examples of people
> we are familiar with.
>

Obviously no one can tell if a system is installed correctly or not and
the cops don't care. So you wind up fining the bad companies but also
the good install companies who have dumb clients. Certainly the
companys who are concerned will already be doing things to cut down on
their false alarm rate and the bad ones will be paying the majority of
the fines, but over all, I don't think it will cut down on what the
authorities see as a 99% false alarm rate regardless of how may actual
signals are received or how many the number has been reduced from what
it "would" have been if there were no fines ...... but factoring in the
increase of the number of installs that have taken place since the
original count ...... Da yadda yadda yadda....

> >
> > and what about the business side of the story,commercial account where the
> > cleaning team change every damn month and they cant read english..have
> > difficulty just to speak english,and plain just dont care about alarms..<
>
> And what about not taking on an account that will cause headaches like
> that? Walk away from the deal. There are more than enough commercial
> accounts that don't have that baggage. Shudder to think about actually
> saying NO to some RMR just because it comes along with umpteen false
> alarms per month, right?
>

Are you saying ..... "If everyone would work together and do the same
thing with the same goal" (?)  Just like here is ASA?   Yeh ......
sure. And all the accounts that the good companys drop, there'll be the
bottom feeders that will never ask why the end user "dropped" is old
alarm company.   ( by the way, I'm leading up to another alternative)
> >
> > what can i do about that? ask my customer to pay me back the fine? they
> > first thing that will happen ,they will go to fly by nights connected to
> > central station in another juridiction,and voila..case closed,where do you
> > will send the fine? <
>
> Again, we should use discretion when signing up a client. If it is
> going to be a trouble situation then just walk away. Let someone else
> sign them up. Why bother with a headache?
>
>
You think that way but there are those who would, will actually make a
business out of picking up these accounts for what ever period of time
it takes them to make their "set up fees" and use up the "grace period"
of false alarms ..... and then move one to the next morsel from the
bottom of the pile. I'd even conjecture that someone would even charge
these "risk" users a premium on top of their monthly charge but with no
effort to reduce the false signals.

> >
> > the only way to fix the false alarm issue is to have a way of confirming if
> > an alarm is real or not,and that is video confirmation,let have the
> > integration of video system to alarm system as a big incentive for sale to
> > the alarm manufacturer you dont need high end camera and crystal clear video
> > to realise if there is a break in or not...or if the Johnson forgot to put
> > the cat in the basement before leaving for the day.. <
>
> That is one of the ways but how many customers are going to pay for
> cameras in each living area, and who is going to pay the increased
> monitoring rate? This would eliminate a vast majority of the market.
> Joe Blow couldn't afford that, and how many that could are going to let
> us start ripping up walls to install cameras?

Video is ok for commercial, but I can just see you trying to convince
that cute Mrs Gonzales with the nice body and great pair of t....s that
you've got to put a camera in her house ..... "honest Mrs Gonzales, the
camera only comes on when there's an alarm ..... honest ..... really
really .... no lie .... " With those innocent eyes of yours glued
directly on her t.....s


>
> So again, if imposing a fine on the customer doesn't work, which it
> doesn't, and if you disagree with fining the installing company, then
> what would be your answer to reducing false alarms OUTSIDE of slowing
> down the response time?
> Two way voice is nice, but not everyone is going to pay for it, and not
> every central offers real two way.
> These solutions being employed now are not as affective as they should
> be. When we have a 99% false alarm rate that means we are right only 1%
> of the time.
> If I wanted to be wrong all of the time I'd stay home and listen to my
> wife, but I am in an industry that I love, and I HATE the fact we are
> nowhere near as efficient as we should be.
> We can scream, yell, and trade insults, but at the end of the day the
> numbers are still there.
>

If you want to talk to someone who convinced ME of what to do about the
false signals rate, you should try to get in touch with Irv Fischer up,
I think in Montreal. If you think that suggesting that installation
companys is going to cause you to be blasted to hell ...... wait till
you hear what they do up there. At first I thought ..... what a stupid
thing to do ...... but the more he explained how it was working and the
control that he had over the false alarm rate, the more I thought
they'd found the best solution ....... for now, at any rate.

Their solution? ....... fine the Central stations. Who better to keep
statistics and control alarm installers and end users all in one place.
It's the focal point of everything that happens in the alarm
installation trade. There are a lot fewer central stations that have to
"come together" to decide on what's going to be allowed and what isn't.
They can dictate to alarm installers what the requirements are and they
can pass along fines to the installing companys who in turn have to
justify why an alarm occurs to their clients and if they choose, they
can pass it on to their clients if it's the clients fault. The main
thing about this process is that as long as the Centrals decide what
the standards are ..... the installation companys don't have any choice
on what's going to happen, because of the colaboration between
centrals, which would be more likely to happen than between alarm
installation companys. I've forgotten what Irv's company name is but
I'm sure someone here will remember. In all of the discussions I've
heard about cutting down on false signals, their solution had
statistics to back up what they had done and were doing,  which the
authorities couldn't argue with. Irv had every number down to a "T" and
could cite you statistics for an hour on the improvement of the false
alarm rate. Took a revamping of the "outlook" on what a central
stations "job" is, but after that hurdle was crossed among the Centrals
in an area, it sounded like a good solution. If I remember right, they
didn't have any choice because it was the authorities who decided it
was going to be that way. After the initial screaming and kicking by
the Centrals, a few years later, ...... most everyone was happy with
how it was working.

I'd think it would be almost impossible to get the Centrals here in any
area of the US to come together to agree with this process. I once
brought it up at an association meeting, and not only the Central
station owners voiced their "strong objections" even the alarm
installing companys thought that it wouldn't work ...... crazy idea,
etc.