Re: New House Alarm - Am I locked out?

[Nelson Muntz <none@xxxxxxxxx>]

jasonextras@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

>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.


That's a bunch of crap.  If they own the programming, and you own the
panel they should set the panel back to -default- upon request (for
the cost of a service call).  That would erase their data, and allow
you to use the panel.

However, a service call would cost $50-$100 to do so, and you can
replace the board for $30.  Hell, I have a few old Vista-10's laying
around, and you can have one- but it will cost ya $10 probably to
ship.

Report it to the BBB.  It sounds like they are dishonest.