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QUESTION:
Hi Ken
All systems should be programmed with at least a weekly
Central Station test report.
Most Centrals do not charge extra as long as it is not supervised.
If the end user does anything, to change the connection path,
and the test is not received, most of the controls that have
been installed over the past 15 years will show a Comm Fail
that must be acknowledged by the user.
I have found that by doing this, "they" can't claim they did not know!!
Stephen Wolf
West Palm Beach
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ANSWER:
Since this is more technical than legal I asked a central station manager to respond. Here is his response:
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Ken:
Thanks for the opportunity to respond to this inquiry.
Yes I do recommend weekly test signals as a way of checking on the customers and the fee associated with them is worked on a dealer by dealer basis. At Nationwide, for dealers that have their own phone lines it is included in our negotiated charges, and if they are on Nationwide's 800 numbers then it is about $1 per month additional. Since Nationwide has very competitive rates for our dealers our charges, even including the test signals, is usually less than any other reputable wholesale central station servicing the country
At Nationwide Digital Monitoring we encourage dealers to take a proactive approach to their customers. If a customer changes phone companies and the alarm is not communicating over the phone line it opens up the obvious issues of if there was a break-in, fire, or other emergency the alarm would not communicate to the central station and therefore no action would be taken. We encourage dealers to reach out to any customers that have phone test fails and correct the communication problem before it becomes an issue. By being proactive and calling the customers the customer knows that the dealer is looking out for them, because if the dealer waits until the alarm goes off and then nothing happens the customer is going to blame the dealer for this, weather or not they acknowledged it on the keypad, and go look for a new alarm company. This is also a great time to reach out to the customer to sell them a backup radio or IP communicator, since the dealer has to visit the location either way might as well fix the phone problem and sell a second communication path. More and more the phones are gone for good and a backup communication path is the only communication with the central station.
We provide the information on any test timer fails or communication issues to our dealers by either a daily activity report or some prefer to get the information instantly in an email right after the fail occurs. Either way we encourage them to deal with the customer in an expedited fashion so that the customer doesn’t lose faith in their system. Even if the user acknowledged at the keypad they will always say they didn’t, this can be that the child acknowledged it or the wife and now the dealer is dealing with the husband, or best of all they probably didn’t ever ready what it said just hit okay.
Aaron L. Wahrsager
Director of Monitoring Operations
Nationwide Digital Monitoring Co.
Phone (800) 221-0826 x142