Re: New home, new alarm... major co. or independent?

[invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Beachcomber)]

>We have had ADT and had no real issues in our townhome but the system
>is very simple. I am mainly intrested in getting as modern technology
>as possible, keeping the costs of mointoring low but still with great
>mointoring service. It seems many suggest an independent but I have NO
>IDEA, none at all where to start to find an independent in suburban
>Chicago other than the yellow pages and that leaves me with no idea
>about the quality of their service or products.
>
>With a house like mine, and my needs (total perimeter protection,
>additonal smoke, water, CO detection, radio backup etc.) what would you
>guys do? If you say "go independent" how can I even start to be
>knowledgeable to find a company that will have top notch products,
>install and monitoring for a good price?
>
>Thanks
>

Another question for you to consider...

How independent do you want to be in terms of servicing the system?

As a fellow homeowner, I would agree that a hardwire system is going
to be more reliable, in general, than a wireless system.  However, if
you have a difficult house to wire, most alarm companies are going to
balk at giving you any deals on a wired system, charge you full price
($1500 - $2000 or more), or convince you to go wireless for the
convenience of their installers.  For a wired system, they might, for
example, have to run some of the wires on the surface of your walls,
if a convenient fish run is not possible.

The free or heavily discounted alarm systems are based on the model of
the hope to make up the cost by signing you up to a long-term
monitoring contract.

My preference is to pay the actual cost for the work done to get a
decent hard-wired system, and then find an independent monitoring
service that either charges month-by-month or will have contracts no
longer than a year (with discounts).  If you own the system, you have
the power.  You will have to be more pro-active about maintenance,
maybe learning more about the system yourself from the programming and
maintenance manuals, but you will save a ton of money in the long run.

On the other hand, if money is no object, and you like the big
companies like ADT, etc. you may or may not get better service.

Beachcomber