Re: New House Alarm - Am I locked out?

["Roland Moore" <roland@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>claim to own the programming of the unit itself and will under no
> >circumstances allow the unit to function locally.

This practice may not be legal in your state and is certainly not ethical.
If a company has to use strong arm tactics to get or keep your business then
I would definitely look elsewhere.

<jasonextras@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1176951397.952756.104380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 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?
>