June 20, 2011
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Comments
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Great forum Ken,
Here in Calgary, Alberta Canada we used all of the arguments put forward here to no avail.
We now have to incur the extra expense/overhead involved to bill our clients for the fines ($75 for every false). Obviously we don’t collect them all so some accounts are lost.
Some companies charge a $10 - $15 “handling fee” as well.
On the licensing front, we have a city based alarm co. license/criminal check bylaw here that many in the industry supported hoping to curb trunk slammers. But in the end this also just increased our cost of doing business with more red tape, overhead and wasted time with all staff going to city hall for annual renewals.
Randy S. Larkam
AE Security
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Ken
A couple of more questions on the subject of fining the alarm company.
1. Who gets the fine if the alarm company has gone out of business?
2. Who gets the fine if the original installing company has had the alarm taken over by another alarm company?
3. What is the statute of limitations? What if the original installing company hasn’t been asked to service a subscriber owned system since the day the installation was finished and there is no service or monitoring contract in force? How many years is the alarm company still responsible?
I have not communicated these questions to the politicos in AZ, but anyone is free to quote them when they do write to AZ.
Bob B, NJ
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Ken.
I think if I owned an alarm company, I would purchase a home in Arizona, install an alarm system from a competitor and then have as many false alarms as possible so that my competitor would have on pay! Really makes a lot of sense Arizona!!!
JF
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Ken,
As always, the topics posted always bring out good as well as some interesting perspectives from around the industry. As an alarm dealer, should I be put into a situation where I was responsible for paying the false alarm fine(s), my first though would be to get rid of the abusers since the cost of the fine(s) and reimbursement efforts would far out weigh the benefit of having them as a client. There are those users that no matter how much time and effort you put in to them, they will continue to be an abuser.
One of the issues the Avondale City Counsel is missing would be the fact that the canceled abuser will simply call another company to provide service. This abuser will continue to be a burden on the city's budget by continually creating unnecessary dispatches because the city has not addressed the source of the bleeding. That abuser will continue to go from one company to the next. This is a reality and should not be hard for the counsel members to understand. The only way for an alarm company to learn of a potential client's history, prior to connecting them, is if the PD has a good alarm management program in place outlined in an alarm ordinance for the city which includes a fee structure and registrations of the alarm users. If they have a program and it isn't working for them, they should ask for some industry assistance. With a current and properly run program the City Commission would not have to go this route in the first place since they would be able to identify the abusers and take appropriate action as outlined in the ordinance. They have obviously not consulted with anyone as to if this billing issue will produce the results they are looking for. There are to many proof positives that these management programs work.
On the other hand, this could be the wants and wishes of the city's accounting department rather than the PD that actually carries the burden of unnecessary dispatches. It is easier to send out one bill with fines for 10 different addresses than it is to send out 10 separate bills, one to each of the abusers. This is not or should not be part of an alarm management program. There may not be an out of whack false alarm problem in Avondale, Arizona. If this is the case, there could be 1000 dispatches or 1 dispatch in a one month period and it wouldn't matter. It is simply a case of how they choose to do there billing. All of the statistical information in the world on false alarm prevention will not change their mind because that is not their goal.
The question is, "What are they trying to accomplish?" Reduce false alarms or cut accounting department costs. They may say one thing but really mean the other. So the beat goes on........the industry has some work to do in Avondale, Arizona.
Robert M, Worthy CPP
President
Secur Technologies, Inc.
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Here in Hawaii the customer pays for the false alarm charge after (3) strikes –
Antoinette Boilard
alertalarmhawaii
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It is always good to see feedback from people like Maria from AZ.
Jim L. Morris