Re: False alarms - Irv Fisher

[Nomen Nescio <nobody@xxxxxxxxx>]

Everywhere Man said:

>What do you think about fining the centrals? Jim mentioned that they do
>that somewhere in Canada, and said the rates dropped alot. I googled
>for the Irv Fisher post but I couldn't find it.

I went looking through Google and found a couple of his posts, which appear
below.  He sounds like an interesting guy, too bad he isn't posting any
more.  These are from about seven years ago.

----------------------------------------

Our marketplace went to $73.50/dispatch back in 1996. We moved all
our customers to private response charging them $4-$5/mo. We could
have left them with police and upped their monthly fee to $7 but basic
economics and a good guard capability convinced me otherwise. I did
this precisely for the reason you give. I did NOT want either my
customer or myself 'scared' to use their system. For this $, they are
guaranteed they will get 4 dispatches in any 12 month period. NO, I'm
not crazy. I follow up every darned false to make sure whatever
caused it wont happen again. But I'm prepared to eat a 2nd if need
be. It takes guts to tell all your customers this is how it is but
when it's over, you have a viable business and a happy customer base.

Whoever and wherever you are, once there's an onerous response cost in
your area, you should convert it to monthly RMR, just like your
monitoring, or suffer the consequences.

---------------------------------------

A word of friendly advice. I cut my teeth in the business on false alarms.
Spent several years speaking to empty rooms. Had to put up with leaders of
our
think tank who couldn't think. Never get too serious about false alarms. If
you keep it light, you might attact some interest. Since it became
fashionable
at association levels, Bonifas has taken on the crusade. I couldn't take
national meetings any more where the most serious issue was, "We shouldn't
call
them false alarms--it gives the industry a negative image. They're not
really
false. Something set off the alarm. Let's call them loose window or door
alarms. How about just 'nuisance' alarms."

We have a single, smallish city called Saskatoon that implemented the #900
number. Canadians are quiet folk. The alarm industry accepted it. It's $50,
(US$32), per call. It's got its humour too. I got a bill last month for 2
calls for the same address 5 minutes apart. When I checked the automation
software, there's a note from the operator on the first call saying the
police
warned here there's a $50 charge so she better be sure she wants the
dispatch.
She says I'll call you back and checks with a keyholder. The keyholder says
they want the police sent. So my dingaling calls back and dispatches. I
haven't decided if it's cheaper to pay the 2nd call or contest it with my
payment for the other 3 that month. We have other ploys too. According to
our bylaws, only a 'recognized' monitoring station can be billed. If we get
the
keyholder to call, there's no charge. They can call 911. If there's a way,
the
alarm professional will find it.

Toronto originally approved a #900 plan. But the alarm industry in Toronto
challenged it on very narrow grounds and won. The police were pissed
because
the RBOC promised them they would get approval. So they went out and set up
their own admin department in the PD and started billing $73.50 a pop. By
the
time the RBOC got the proposal changed to make it legal, the police had
long
passed the point of no return. Why did the RBOC get so interested? Toronto
was
dispatching 75,000 calls per year when the #900 was due to kick in. The
Bell
gets 5% of the gross. The gross was going to be $5Mil. Not bad for adding a
few lines to the bottom of the monthly phone bill.

I pay Toronto about $2100 per month for my measly 30 calls, (down from 900
a
month before the bylaw). I pay Saskatoon between $50 and $100. My staff say
they'd rather deal with a PD directly than a #900 service. One of the major
reasons is reconciliation of the response charges. When I get Saskatoon, I
have
to run a report to find a dispatch to Saskatoon during that time period.
The
#900 invoice does not include any details about the response, only the date and
time. The police send us the address. It's much easier to deal with.
Nick, it's bad enough to refer to me when talking about false alarms. When
you
refer to Simon, people dont just fall asleep, they run away.

He's right though, (in a nutty kind of way). Before the stations had to pay
for
response in Toronto, I personally measured the 10 major false alarm rates
for
the association. I wasn't supposed to know who they were and truthfully
there
was one I was never sure of. ADT never allowed their data to be used but ha
ha
on them, all I had to do was subtract the other 9 from the cop's totals and
boom, I had ADT's. But that's another story. Before the bylaw, one station
was
measuring over 0.9 FDSY. I know from a well placed source, they're down to
under 0.6 now. Most of the other stations went from 0.7-0.75 to the mid
50's,
low 60's. We thought we were doing great at 0.61 before the bylaw but I
managed
to get my rate down to an astonishing 0.45 for the 6 months immediately
following the bylaw. At the risk of making a lot more enemies on this .ng
than
I already have, IT WAS THE STATIONS THAT HAD THE MOST IMPACT. We simply put
more effort into determing the alarm false than we did before. The dealers
stopped fighting stations like mine and actually started helping us. Many
requested we call them before dispatching. Some have specific instructions
to
this day we can not dispatch without their explicit permission. This is
somewhat time sensitive and the operator themselves have tremendous
latitude
should they decide the alarm looks more real than false. I even gave them
permission to call the Toronto police at $73.50 per call if they felt the
alarm
looked real. I'm real proud of my staff because since Sept '96, they
haven't
guessed wrong. Even if they did, we dispatch guards anyway.
I dont know what the numbers are any more but for the first 12 months of
the
program in Toronto, dispatches dropped by 50%. That was pretty cool because
I
personally pulled 10-15% of them myself.

As for the fly-on-the wall stuff, been there, done that. This is chaos
boys.
Forget the comspiracy theory. It's every man for himself. It's amazing how
large MS's could make such bad decisions and still be successful. Here's my
personal observation. You have to be the stupidest, most brain dead manager
in
the whole world to send an 'impartial' analysis of the customer's options
to him
and ask him to choose one. This is the height of lunacy. I know. I've
experienced it from both sides. Steve, if you're reading out there, I
really
felt sorry for you but you had to prove this the hard way. Although I
thought
your analysis really sucked, you took your lumps like a man. For that, you
have
my earnest respect.

As for the dealers, too many listened to their customers and not their own
business sense. For those that dealt with the middle marketplace and not
the
high-end customers, they told me they polled their customers and the
customers
wanted to pay by the dispatch. So they told me to bill them by the response
or
they told me to call a private guard they would pay directly. Well, if
you're a
businessman in the alarm industry, you dont need me to explain what
happened
when those alarm companies rememberd to bill the customer. The customer
says it
was the alarm company's fault. An immediate new marketing angle was born.
$22
per month including unlimited response. That cut another $2-$3 per month
from
the installing dealer's bottom line. That was $2-$3 he just couldn't afford
to
lose.
--------------------------------------------

75%???? Not in our lifetime, (yours may be longer than mine but we
can definitely rule out the next 10 years). F/D rates are about
80-85% lower than F/A rates but since we cant agree on transformers,
we're not going to get agreement on the distinction between F/A and
F/D.

The best F/D rate I've ever seen was 95% and I think it was rigged.
I'm not including certain alarm monitoring companies that claim the
inverse, (miss enough reals and you can accomplish a lot of false
alarm reduction).

If you do the math, a 75% rate is 400% better than a 95% rate.
Wouldn't that be something?!?!?!