February 10, 2011

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Getting contracts signed

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Ken,

    Good response.  The funny thing is that the company that I was referring to was very similar to “anon” ‘s.  The owner’s son, who was giving us advice from the sideline, warned us that if we sent out contracts, “all of the customers would just cancel.”  We had a handful of cancellations, but the ones that didn’t want to sign a contract were the ones that didn’t want to sign a check for their monthly monitoring either.   No one said that it is easy to do this, but it is necessary.

Mitch Reitman

S.I.C. Consulting, Inc.

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Dear Ken,

    Just read your e mail from a alarm installer working 40 year in the alarm industry and doesn't have signed contracts.

    Well (me too) I am drawing up a cover letter to send with your Central Office Monitoring Contract to be signed by my subscribers, How can I start this letter without getting the subscriber mad or lose the account, I want to be as nice as possible.  I will enclose a self addressed stamp envelope too.

Please any hints would be great.

Thank You

Steven P

Safe World Alarm Co.

***********  Your letter can start with your intention to update your contracts.  You can ask for confirmation on call directives, special instructions, password updates.  We do have a new Call Directive that we provide when you get our updated Monitoring Contract; that could be a good reason to contact your subscriber and get a new contract signed.   You can add some incentive, such as fixed rates for year or more, or some monthly credit for a prompt response back.  You should get a 25 to 50% favorable response on your first mailing.  After that you may want to offer a free survey or inspection, or free smoke or CO detector.  When making service calls be sure to get a Service Contract signed as well as a new monitoring contract.

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Codes

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Hi Ken;

    I think Blair is 100% WRONG.  I don't give my installer code to anyone.  If a commercial fire customer doesn't want to pay for monitoring, I have him get the LAHJ to sign off on it.  If it's OK with the fire marshal, then I program it as a "local alarm only."  I still keep the telephone connected to it so I can remote program it if necessary.  I know you are not in favor of the outright selling of commercial fire alarms, but if it is a small business and they have to have it, leasing it may put it just out of their financial grasp.  I have had one or two customers over the years decide to leave me and contract with a different alarm company and all I do then is default the fire panel back to the manufacturers original installer code.  I know guys that are pricks and default the whole panel, but I think that is wrong.  The original customer paid you for the equipment and paid you to program it.  Erasing all of that data is unscrupulous at best.

John from NJ

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Verizon

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Ken,

    I hope by now the news has hit everybody in the alarm industry if not they can read the article themselves. Verizon is getting into the alarm business starting in New Jersey. Other telco's have the same interest also and their target is NJ as well. It will be only a matter of time before the cable companies jump in as they want the same market share also.

    My question now is, how do we protect our clients from Verizon trying to take over existing systems? And are our contracts strong enough to deter them from trying? Also I could see a big expanse to us if we have to enforce our contract terms if a client does switch.

    The telecom's and cable companies are well suited now with their technology to do some damage to all alarm dealers everywhere.

 http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/verizon-debuts-home-security-offering-ces

Jerry

Spectrum Cable & Alarm systems Inc.

NJ

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UCC

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Ken

    I am inquiring in regard to the Alarm contract we are using, the page titled UCC Financing Statement. Should this page be created as copies due to line 6 stating to give Debtor and Secured party copies?

Please advise,

Sheri Costa

**********  You're not going to be using the UCC provision often enough to go out and print up the UCC Financing Statement.  You can provide a photo copy or scanned copy.  Your contract permits the filing of the UCC-1 and I do not believe you are required to send the subscriber a copy of the UCC-1.  It gets filed in a central location in your state, usually the Secretary [or Department] of State.

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Another comment on New York's proposed monitoring license

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Dear Ken;

    I have found licensing to be nothing but a green light for government intrusion.  For all of the good things it was supposed to do, I don't see any of them happening.  In New Jersey, it was touted as a means to get rid of all of the trunk slammers.  I don't think that has happened at all, and now if anything, the trunk slammers have gone to work for these outfits that install "free" alarm systems.  Anyone in the industry who knows or cares anything about our industry knows that "free" means cheap, often sub-par equipment, but the customer pays a premium price for "low end" monitoring.  Many of the "free" systems use Ademco Low Speed for their transmission format.  That takes almost a minute for the alarm to notify the central station.  Using Contact ID or a GSM radio, and the information is in front of an operator in less than 10 seconds.

    I don't know anyone who hasn't felt the pinch of this down turned economy.  Yet they opened the door with this damnable licensing, and the end is nowhere in sight.  You need a burglar alarm license and separate fire alarm license if you want to install a residential system and include fire protection.  Many people were unsure when the BA/FA licenses went into place, so they kept or secured a "P" number for commercial work as well.  I got a "P" number only because I was tired of arguing with LAHJ's who don't know the law, but you had better follow their mandates if you want to work in their towns.  I thought that licensing was supposed to eliminate that.

    Then came the business license.  I called the division of taxation and inquired.  I explained that I already had three licenses.  I even asked the guy if he thought I got them just to collect them.  His response was "we want to make sure you pay the right amount of tax."  If you buy a box of screws or a box of wire, unless you are listing parts like those on your invoices and are charging sales tax for them, the Div. of Taxation wants you to pay the sales tax on those items up front.  Those were his words.

    Then on Earth Day, 2010, came RRP.  How in hell they determined that installing a security system comes under Renovation, Repair or Painting is beyond me.  I have been in business for over thirty years, and I can't remember ever opening more than just a few square inches of wallboard in any one room on an install, and that includes back in the day when we used to flush mount security consoles and motion detectors.  I would have no problem disseminating the information under RRP, but the class was $300, then the license was another $300, and of course all the other paraphernalia including the HEPA vacuum gets the grand total up to nearly $1,500.00, and that is before you even do one job.

    So now, we are up to FIVE licenses.  Where will it end?  Does no one else see this for what it is, and that is just a big power grab by the government?  I don't see this raising the professionalism in our trade, I see it as a way for the larger companies to squeeze the little guys out of business.  What's next, needing a license to install Carbon Monoxide detectors?  I went to the CEU classes for CO detectors and the instructor stated that approximately 500 people per year die in the USA from carbon monoxide poisoning.  Do the math, 500 people in a country of over 300 million, is like .0002%.  And then of course, they instructor couldn't tell me if that 500 number excluded suicides where people park the car in the garage and leave it running to "off" themselves.  I even posed the question, "did it ever occur to the manufacturers of CO detectors, that some people are just too stupid to live?"  You really can't help the guy whose furnace breaks, and he throws some charcoal in his Hibachi grill and lights it on the kitchen table as a source of heat.  Or the brainiacs who put gasoline into a kerosene heater and they wonder why when they light it, that it bears a strange resemblance to an afterburner on a jet engine.  For the few people who do perish from a faulty furnace or collapsed chimney flu, I think that the CO detectors are a good idea.  But again, it is just too damned much government interference.

If it wasn't so hard to constantly stay one step ahead of all of the forensic accountants that work for the state and IRS, I would sell off my accounts, work only for cash and drop right off the grid.  Then they would get NOTHING from me.  I have always tried to play by the rules, but this is rapidly becoming an untenable situation.

 

I apologize for the long tirade, but some of this stuff just needs to be said.

 

John from NJ