Re: $500 budget - hmmm...

[Matt Ion <soundy106@xxxxxxxxx>]

Moe Szyslak wrote:

> I've been in the bus. for 16 years, but just now for myself.  I've
> always been the tech.  Now I'm dealing with the other end.

You sound a bit like the guy I work for... spent years doing alarms, got more
into the CCTV end working for one or two larger outfits, and finally struck out
on his own several years ago when the constant go-go-go to someone else's beat
got too much for him.  He's doing pretty well now (well, WE are, I should say),
but he had to go through that same stage of taking on some of the "petty" jobs
to help get a customer base going (although he did have the advantage of a lot
of contacts from his previous positions).

> There are many of them huh?  What do you do, just walk away or try to
> emphasize the importance of security and hard sell?

It's really getting to the point now that we don't even bother with the smaller
mom-and-pop businesses, and pretty much avoid residential at all costs... with
surveillance systems, people see the spiffy little Costco systems they can get
with a monitor/VCR combo and four B&W cameras for $250, and don't understand why
they should pay us on the order of $250-$350 *per camera* (installation not
included).

If a place REALLY wants a quote, one of us will go in, give it a quick
look-over, tell them how many cameras they should have, and give them a rough
number right there (use $500 installed per camera, makes the math easy, and add
on the price of your DVR of choice).  If they even blink at the number, or try
to talk the price down, we'll just thank them for their time and walk out.
They're welcome to go to Costco; we know chances are they'll be back when they
discover it's just not sufficient (usually after the first time they try to look
at footage of an incident).  Of course, the price goes up significantly at that
point, and as often as not, they're happy to pay it for something that WORKS.

Case in point: we just finished "upgrading" a gas station that we set up a year
or so ago with a DVR, two indoor cameras, and prewire for cameras on four of six
pumps (no, I have no idea why they didn't want to prewire to all six)... a
friend/relative(??) of the owner owed him some money, so he offered to provide
and install some cameras: super-cheap-ass B&W/IR bullet cams on four pumps, but
only two of them the ones we prewired.  The guy strung wires from my original
drops on two pillars, surface-run across the canopy soffit to the outer trim,
tucked under the trim to the far end of the canopy, and back across the surface
to THOSE pillars.  A piece of 3/4" PVC pipe down the pillar to get the wires to
the cameras... cameras screwed into the steel posts with nylon inserts... WTF???

Needless to say, the cameras were virtually useless, between the non-adjustable
too-tight view (looked like about 8-9mm on 1/3", although I expect the cameras
were actually 1/4") and the fuzzy picture from the cheap CCDs and no doubt
plastic lenses.  We sold them three used 1/3" cameras in environmental housings
for the pumps, a couple of 1.3MP IP cameras off the building for plate views,
and a couple more 1/3" cameras in the store, including one to replace the
"covert" PIR/pinhole cam the friend/relative put behind the paypoint - the
camera only turned on when the *functioning* PIR sensed motion!

I spent two and a half days on the job, with the boss putting in a good
half-a-day helping out, to redo all the canopy wiring (including replacing the
solder-type BNCs that they used WITHOUT soldering to the RG-58(!!) cable they
added).  The part that REALLY pissed me off though, was that they used the
original four RG-59 cables I had run between the back room where the pump wires
came in, and the office, as a pullstring... to pull in four RG-58s, and four
power wires so they could power all four pump cameras off a single wall-wart in
the office (I'd left the pump-cam power runs terminated in the back room
planning to power them from there).

Moral of the story: when he asked me why it was taking so long, I told the owner
it was because of the nasty NASTY wiring his "friend" had done... all he could
do was shake his head and respond, "Live and learn..."

Indeed.