more on holding manufacturers responsible
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Ken,
regarding John W. Yusza's letter on manufacturer's warranties, I need to agree with his principles. I will walk away from a manufacturer at a moments notice. My loyalties are to my reputation and my customer's satisfaction.
James Kamerer, President
Security & Safety Solutions, Inc.
Hicksville, NY
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more comment on regular testing
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Hey Ken,
if this thought process works for weekly, and monthly than why isn't daily testing mentioned? And is this only for Pots or Alarmnets too.
Captain John Minerva, President
Executive Electronics of Southwest Florida, Inc.
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comment on challenge to fire district taking over monitoring
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I would like to respond to Mr. Sargent of the Keltron Corporation [April 16, 2012 email] . … He states that he has heard about 20 minute response times “for a couple of decades now”. I would love to see the statistics on where he gets this information. As a UL/FM/ETL and other local municipality approved and listed central station, we are audited every year by these organizations. We have to prove our response times to them. But going beyond that, our operators are trained and perform in accordance with the code and any state rules and regulations above that. We do not verify any commercial fire alarm. We do not hold back on a dispatch even if a customer calls and says it’s a false alarm. We let the municipality decide whether to go or not. We also have to be aware of all local rules. For example, in Delray Beach, they do not permit verification of even residential alarm activations, so our operators dispatch immediately on those signals as well. I know that we are not alone in our policies. I would go out on a limb and say that most central stations, or even remote stations perform the same way. I believe you would be hard pressed to prove your allegation of 20 minute responses. And in the event such an event occurred, then it’s up to the local jurisdiction to enforce the rules, issue a citation, complain to the licensing board, or refuse to allow them to monitor in their jurisdiction, whatever the local and state law allows.
Roy Pollack, CPP SET, Director of Compliance
Devcon Security Services Corp.
Hollywood, FL
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comment on activation fee
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Ken,
I always find it interesting reading about fees and what not. The secret is perception. IMO to do it right figure it into a yearly budget as a indirect cost (if you want the customer to perceive more value). Spread it out over the total projected number of installs for the year If it's a cost to the company there has to be a charge back to the customer somewhere. $24.99 x 100 systems is a lot of money to just give away IMO. Too many times companies only think about there direct costs. Providing great customer service requires you to be able to pay all your bills and hire the better employees not by just being the cheapest price. If you show the fee on the monitoring contract it can be negotiated. Not everyone is going to say no.
BH
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Question price increase
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Ken
I have a quick question…..if a Subscriber Monitoring Agreement is silent on Price Increases, what do we need to do to price increase the customer? Will a simple letter of notification to them before-hand suffice? Or are we prohibited from doing a price increase because the contract is silent?
E
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Answer
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If your contract is silent on increases then you can't increase without consent to amend the contract by the subscriber. The Standard Form Contracts all have increase provisions.