Re: An ethical conundrum... Opinions welcome!

["Doug" <not@xxxxxxxx>]

"Jim" <alarminex@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:c9c11d75-d31b-46c3-bcdb-878d0424a1b7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Nov 29, 1:26?am, Frank Olson
<use_the_email_li...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>That may all be true but, If the owner has a contract with the old
>alarm company, what's stopping them from accelerating the contract to
>obtain the balance due? Whether they were right or wrong, they can
>still attempt to enforce the contract and the owner will have to
>afford the defense fees, if to obtain only the fact that they were
>negligent (and probably not grossly negligent). Rather than do that,
>( again, regardless of who is right or wrong) At that point the owner
>can just tell you to forget the monitoring and they'll just continue
>the monitoring contract with the old alarm company or ..... worse, the
>owner signs your contract, for what ever  your term is and then he
>finds out the old alarm company wont let him out of their contract.
>Now he's obligated to two contracts both of which are enforceable.
>What do you do? Back down or take him to court if he decides to go
>with the other alarm companys monitoring?  Either way you lose.
>
>Maybe this is something you should bring out into the negotiations
>now, just so there's no surprise. If you're going to potentially miss
>out on the monitoring, you may want to rethink your installation
>costs. ( However, admittedly,  I don't know how your price your jobs)
>

I doubt that any profit from monitoring plays a large part in the pricing of
a major fire alarm system and the inclusion or exclusion of a monitoring
contract is probably not a deal breaker. Even over a five year period the
income from monitoring  such a system is likely to be an almost
insignificant amount compared to the installation cost.

Doug