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

[blueman <NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxx>]

tourman <robercampbell@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> My main beef with the security industry is that few if any alarm
> companies advise clients of the simple, no cost and low cost things
> they should also do, plus the all important physical security
> precautions that MUST be taken to ensure an adequate, OVERALL level of
> security. Simply pushing electronic solutions because that's all they
> sell, and not advising clients of all the necessary precautions, is
> incompetent at best and dishonest at worst. As professionals, our
> industry should be selling SECURITY, not just monitoring contracts !!
>
> For 15 years before I got into this industry formally, I specialized
> in physically securing homes against break in. I did thousands of
> homes, and to my knowledge, never did one of my clients have a break
> in after that. Several customers were attacked, but nothing came of
> it. It's not rocket science; only common sense in most cases. Nor does
> it cost much, and has no ongoing costs.
>
> Sir, to this point, you seem to have thought out very well the
> intricacies of monitoring services; you might want to do the same for
> the physical secuirty of your home.

Excellent point!  You are totall right about "security companies". The
irony is that while my current company was slamming the low cost
national competitors as just "monitoring companies" they themselves do
only 2 things: (1) make money monitoring (2) make money installing and
servicing the monitoring devices.

Not once in 7 years of service have they mentioned one single word about
physical security. Even their mailings to me are all really just ads for
more electronic services and boasts about the size of their new
monitoring center. Even when they did the wired installation which took
about 3 days, they never once made a *single* suggestion about physical
security. All they did was fished wires through this old house.

While you are totally right about physical security, I tend to not worry
too much about it in my neighborhood since we literally have been rated
the safest city/town in the US. That being said, I probably should still
pay more attention but...