Need to cut through the BS on Alarm monitoring costs

[blueman <NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I am looking for honest, unbiased, unemotional answers to this
question. (I know it's Usenet, but one can always hope...)

I currently have a fire & burglary monitoring policy with the local
dominant alarm company. I own the equipment and I am responsible for
service charges to fix the equipment.

They charge me $36/month for straight Internet monitoring.

National online monitoring companies offer seemingly the same service
for $8.95/month. Or 1/4 the cost.

My high-priced local company claims:
- They are big (20,000 customers) - but the national competitor claims
  40,000 customers

- Their service center is "local" -- but it's really halfway across the
  state so does that really mean anything in the day of the Internet

- They are a "security company" vs. competitors being "monitoring"
  companies. Though not sure what that means or why I care

- They have a 5-star UL-listed center - but the national competitor
  claims to be UL-listed and it's not clear what 5-stars means and who
  even grants such certification. Sounds like marketing hype.

- They have 30-second average response time -- but competitor claims the
  same

- They say they have a better BBB track record than big national
  competitors - but the competitor claims an A+ BBB rating which can't
  be too bad

The bottom line is that I can't see one compelling reason to pay 4 times
the competitor rate for what seems to be a commodity service.

- I live in a very safe, low crime neighborhood.

- I primarily pay for the monitoring to get the insurance break.

- I don't stay up nights worrying about fires or burglaries and in any
  case I still have the in-house alarm to warn me of a fire and scare
  off amateur burgalers.

- I am technically adept and have no problem servicing and programming
  my system

Seems like worst case perhaps the response time will be a few seconds
longer in some rare cases or maybe there is a small chance they will
make a mistake -- but the point is that there are so many other failure
points in a security system and we are talking about rare events (fire,
burglary) anyway.

So, why pay 4 times as much????