Re: Need to cut through the BS on Alarm monitoring costs

["Russell Brill" <russwbrill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"nick markowitz" <nmarkowitz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:47da6407-943a-4d06-8dcc-c00a9fc5c392@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Feb 1, 5:34 pm, blueman <NOS...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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????

Go to that national service and find out the hard way. What they
promise and what they deliver is another story.
I have seen national centers take 20 minutes to dispatch a fire
system . owe did I mention the phone calls in middle of night because
your system did not test or some other thing that could wait till
morning  go ahead go to that other service you will gladly pay 10
times the cost to go back to what you have.

Nick,
Are you trying to scare people again??? Oh, BTW I thought you were dead...
Don't know where I got that idea from?????? Here's the answer I LOVE to give
the self monitoring folks when they call with a broken alarm, "Call your
current provider and schedule a service visit, what they just monitor your
system, that's too bad you're not my customer because I monitor and do
repair for MY CUSTOMERS"....... :-)

Russ