Re: New House Alarm - Am I locked out?

[jasonextras@xxxxxxxxx]

Alright.  I called the monitoring company.  I'd call them out by name,
but since the news is not good I think it might be wise to keep it to
myself at this point.  According to them, the previous owner purchased
and owns outright the entire system, including wiring, panels,
keypads, and sensors.  They supposedly never rent or lease equipment,
only sell it.  The company does, however, claim to own the programming
of the unit itself and will under no circumstances allow the unit to
function locally.  Not even if I pay for a tech to come out and make
the necessary changes to the unit.  Nor will they provide the
installer code to allow me to reset the unit to default values (which
I checked and am locked out of).  How they are allowed to disable a
functional alarm system that they do not own is beyond me.  If they
want to wipe the programming since they claim they own it fine, but
they won't even allow me to reprogram my own unit.  I got a supervisor
involved, but they wouldn't budge.

It sounds like my options are limited at this point.  I don't think I
should have to buy a new panel, but it looks like I may have to.

As far as the smoke detectors go, it appears they are wired in through
the 110V system (I looked at this previously), but I can't be sure.
They are First Alert detectors, and the system itself has fire
monitoring capabilities, but I have no idea if the detectors are wired
through the security system because the system does not work at all.
The wires appear to go back towards the security system's mounting
box, but there's insulation behind foil there and I can't trace their
route.  Is there a way for me to find out for sure if they'll function
without the alarm system enabled?