Which monitoring contract should you be using?

Question:

Hi Ken,

    What is the difference between the Central Office Monitoring contract and the standard supervisory equipment sales, monitoring &service contract?

    I use Rapid Response to do my monitoring and they have a contract I have been using.  I just finished a commercial archiving storage facility and I installed the burg panel. 

The electrical contractor installed the fire panel but doesn’t want to monitor it.

The customer wants me to add it to my monitoring.

Which contracts should I be using?

Thanks in advance for your help

Bill

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Answer:

    Your central station provides you with a three party monitoring contract to be signed by you, the subscriber and the central station.  While that is an important contract, it's not your Monitoring Contract.  You need your own Monitoring Contract.  The 3 party contract is designed to protect primarily the central station, not the dealer.  It doesn't contain material information regarding the relationship between the dealer/installer and the subscriber, such as payment terms and length of contract term.  It doesn't contain all of the protective provisions the installer needs.

    The Standard Monitoring Contract is a generic form for the monitoring of all alarm systems.  That's the form you will use in most situations.

    The Supervisory Equipment Sales you refer to is the CCTV Sales or Lease, and that contract is for central station video monitoring services.  If you install CCTV with local DVR then you don't use this CCTV contract; you use the Standard Sales Contract and the Service Contract.

    Don't confuse the CCTV Supervisory contract with the Remote VIdeo Monitoring contract.  The Remote Video Monitoring contract is for the non supervisory CCTV systems that pass through the manufacturer's server and is viewed by the subscriber on computer or phone.   

    See all the available contracts at WWW.ALARMCONTRACTS.COM