Ken,

     like so many of us out here thanks again for all you do for the industry.

    Commenting on the Summer program alarm companies, as we all know yes they don’t have any ethics or respect for themselves.  Its true they can and will use whatever tactic they can come up with just to make the sales! Its true they will market only homes that do display some type of alarm system in use and then will say we bought ABC Alarm or they are there to upgrade their alarm for no cost but the monthly cost will go up.

    Lately they have been blunt at least with our customers in their approach using there has been and increase in burglaries in the area and the bad guys are cutting the phone lines and we notice you have no protection safeguarding that, so we’re here to upgrade your system with newer technologies using GSM radio that don’t need a phone line, again no install cost. 

    As far as the license go, yes they now carry many different state license, however their employees don’t register with the state and have back ground checks done. Who knows they may have been a criminal in the past. Recently a small town not so far from where we are located out of had to pass a city ordinance to now they had to registered with them, and also had the local residence display a sticker advising NO SOLICITATIONS and if you did you would be fined. The reason for all of this was the fact they went  to the local village mayor's home and would not take no for and answer at 10:30 at night. 

    Once you did file a complaint with the state they would not go after them from another state because they just don’t have the funds to do so. So now my thought would be why can’t many local companies can’t get together and file some class action suit on their tactics, lies & deceitful business practice. 

  Sure the list can go on  & on as we all know, but where does the wheel stop!

Norm

Security Alarm   

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Related comment re competition

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Ken,

    I have one that is a real winner.

    One of my associates has an Aunt that had a PERS unit from a major, national, huge, not to be named competitor. He told his Aunt when her 3 year contract was up, he would get her a less expensive system. When the contract expired and the service was terminated, he went her home and helped her box up and ship the old unit and installed ours. Two months went by and there was a knock at her door, a man said he was from a company bought out my company, and he needed to swap out the equipment. He removed our unit and installed his. Two days later, she called her nephew and asked what had happened, he ran over to see for himself, then called me.

    I called the company, who was the same company she originally contracted with and asked about the Aunt, as if I was her relative, and why someone went to her house.  I was told she was on a list of clients who needed to have their equipment upgraded. Remember, this was two months after her original contract was terminated and the unit returned.

    When I told them who I was, and that I aware of their contract expiring. I also explained the relationship between my associate and the client, to show I did not knock on her door to obtain the account I was then told she was on a list from  another company that they purchased. I also found they had disposed of my equipment.

    After going round and round and round with several of their middle management lackeys, and holding their second unit as hostage, they agreed to not bill the Aunt for the three weeks it took to settle this fiasco, and then send me a check for my unit, the labor for the replacement install, legal consulting fees and for my time to smooth this breech of good business practice.

    I think the best part if this is they had the Jiblets to send me a 1099 so I could pay my fair share to Uncle Sam, which I don't mind. I know if one of my associates had pulled a stunt like this to another company, I would have just put my tail between my legs and skulked off into the dark, not sending a reminder to the other company of what poor management and low life sales people my company employed. If I included the name of the company, I am sure everyone would be shocked. I would love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Ron Finelli

Advanced Alert

Selbyville, DE

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Comments on competition from Verizon

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Dear Ken:

    About 12-15 years ago the major phone provider in our state announced they were entering into the security system business. Initially there was fear within the alarm industry everyone would be out of business within a short period of time.

    While some systems were installed, the whole program fell flat on it's face (with financial loss to the phone company) within a year for several reasons....

1) Phone providers don't know the security industry is a very personal one built upon relationships, not mass marketing.

2) They can't provide technical assistance to clients over the phone during the day, let alone after hours and holidays.

3) Their service technicians are challenged to keep up with changes in communications technology without learning an entirely new industry driven by codes.

    This is a cycle that's repeated by different companies from outside the industry time after time with little if any, lasting success. 

Respectfully,    

John W. Yusza, Jr., President

Monitor Controls, Inc.

Wallingford, CT

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Ken

    Seems like everyone thinks that the grass on the other side is greener, but that depends on how much gardening are you willing to put in. Most of our customers prefer the small companies over giants because our service is faster and friendlier. Unless Verizon plans to give away free hardware, I would not worry about. Sooner or later someone will come up with good wireless cameras and wireless (cellphone) watching, maybe of-site recording and we lose the CCTV business, but alarms are much more tightly regulated. I just don't see Verizon installing fire or burg alarms, not even access control. There is just to much labor involved.

Dusan

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Hi Ken;

    Years ago in Canada, Bell Canada and Rogers Cable started offering security systems and services. After discovering there was more to it than plug and play, both exited the industry. There was however a benefit from their short forray into the security market. Their widescale advertising had a positive public awareness impact and real security dealers found new monitored accounts from customers they abandoned.

Keep up the good work, your research and comments are a benefit to the industry.

Brien Welwood

Alliance Security Systems

Cambridge, Ontario

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Ken,

    The phone companies  have a hard time installing phone services.  Most telephone installers that I have worked with don't know how to wire an alarm telephone jack (RJ-31X).

Keep up the great articles .

Aloha,

Tim Wright, V.P.

Argent Security, LLC

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          Telcos have been drooling over alarm service RMR for all of my 30 years in the business.

    In the late 1980s (The "Old") AT&T marketed a wireless system that it subsequently abandoned in the early 90's.  AT&T handed off the remainder of the 11-year statutory required repair support to a California company and left the market place altogether.

    Bell of PA/Bell Atlantic entered the market in the '80's with an alarm transport system called REACT, which was designed to be UL compliant using a polling terminal at the head end and a Subscriber Terminal Unit ("STU") at the subscriber premises.  The signal was superimposed on a POTS line in similar manner to the current DSL, although the polls and data were audible bursts.  The supervision shifted to a subaudible tone when the subscriber's phone was off-hook.  Had REACT been sufficiently reliable it might well have succeeded, but it only served to demonstrate and bring into sunshine the fact that the PSTN, even back then, was hardly up 24/7 although IMO was a lot more reliable than it is today.  Unfortunately REACT itself, apart from the normal PSTN, had its own unique set of problems resulting more frequent and annoying outages than the problematic and costly copper leased lines it was supposed to replace.  It created a lot of service calls and constant worry for us.  (Déjà vu.)  REACT was phased out after a relatively short life cycle, partly due to the advent of cellular solutions.

    Fortunately, these entries were focused on the manufacturing and transport modes, leaving the difficult and labor-intensive system design, sales, installation, monitoring and repair service to us.

    There is little reason to think they will forget these lessons unless they can fully automate the central station process and make the system so reliable and so easy to deploy that a dedicated army of technicians and support people won't be necessary; or the profits justify an extensive infrastructure, as observed with cellular phone service.

    They should also be concerned about their existing transport revenues being yanked out or lost through attrition by angry alarm companies shifting to suppliers and technology that are not their direct competitors.  (For example, I refuse to buy fuel oil from a fuel company that now sells alarms.)

    Perhaps someone from the central station business will share their perspective with us?

Lou Arellano, III

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comment re credit card charge issue:

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    We ran into this same problem with my company.  Once we came into compliance through the very brief internet questionnare, our merchant processing company refunded us the $19.95 non-compliance fee.  It was very simple.  Just remember the compliance "test" has to be completed every year!

Michelle

Protech Security   

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