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COMMENT ON DIY AND MIY FROM JANUARY 23, 2015 ARTICLE
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Ken,
    I do think that DIY and MIY systems do spell the end of an era in the alarm industry.  As you state in your reply – 99 percent of self-monitoring works out fine but the 1 percent will kill you.  That’s true, except none of us believe we’re part of the 1 percent and somehow it’s always going to happen to the other guy.
    One of the saving graces here is the insurance companies.  If you’re a business owner or homeowner, and you’ve taken a discount on your insurance for a monitored system – sooner or later the insurance company will want proof. In the event of a claim and the property owner has made a false statement, it might be pretty hard to explain that the “push notification” to the IPhone in the den was sufficient to qualify as a monitored system.
John Hubbard
Warren Elec. Prot.Sys. Inc.
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COMMENT ON HOW CAN A SMALL ALARM CO GET BIG FROM JANUARY 16, 2015 ARTICLE
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Ken
    You did a pretty good job in your delivery of an advice list to the New Jersey Alarm company.   We are in Oklahoma and you’d think that might make business models different, but doing this for 40 years, growing into the biggest independent locally here, and speaking to many from across the country, geography doesn’t seem to change what is needed.   I would say you missed one thing;  Deliver a good product. 
    Let me flip the coin then and say some of the ‘don’ts’:
    Don’t make backward steps.  Whatever that means.  Bad contracts, not the proper insurance, scamming anyone, skimping on employee pay.  Whatever.   It’s never worth it in the long run.
    Don’t continue to sell/install types of systems that you aren’t going to learn how to do well.
    Don’t think you can do this without deep-pockets or out-working the other companies.
Zeke Lay
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