Monitored house alarm

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tcpdump

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#144082 7-May-2014 09:23

Hello,
Is anyone having a monitored house alarm? If so, any recommendations (or stay away from)?

The main concern would be the response time, it would be pretty much useless if it takes them more than 10 minutes to arrive.

Thanks.

sleepy

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#1038116 7-May-2014 09:29

Hi which part of the country are you in. Alert Monitoring are great in Dunedin.

sbiddle

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#1038117 7-May-2014 09:29

Monitoring and response are two very different things.

There are many companies who do both, but also many who provide monitoring and let you take your choice of guard companies to respond.

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#1038118 7-May-2014 09:30

No alarm company can guarantee a response time.

They have no special dispensation to break road rules and if traffic sucks, well too bad.

I work for a security company in Tauranga and traffic can turn a 10 min response into 30mins.

Good luck if you get a company to guarantee a response time.

tcpdump

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#1038125 7-May-2014 09:33

Sorry, forgot to mention I'm in Auckland.

In Europe (back in early 2000s) there were many companies that were guaranteeing a 10 minute response during daytime and 2 minutes during nighttime (which was quite impressive).

I guess after 30 minutes they might as well bring a broom to help with the cleaning, eh?

Geektastic

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#1038127 7-May-2014 09:37

tcpdump: Hello,
Is anyone having a monitored house alarm? If so, any recommendations (or stay away from)?

The main concern would be the response time, it would be pretty much useless if it takes them more than 10 minutes to arrive.

Thanks.

Our alarm is a Chubb system but Chubb have pretty poor customer service and I wouldn't pick them again - the system itself is fine though. We needed a wireless one as our house is all concrete so drilling through walls and so on to wire the PIR sensors is in the Too Hard basket.

The monitoring is done over our broadband line (we have no home phone line) by Alarm NZ. I cannot say enough good things about them - brilliant. Brian is the man to speak to there.

They send Armourguard (apparently they can't send the police!) who would take at least 50 minutes to get here (but then so would the police) and thus are unlikely to achieve much. It is however a requirement for our insurance and for my restricted firearms licence endorsements that the system is monitored.

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#1038129 7-May-2014 09:37

Also to note, do not let any company fool you into thinking they can get police to respond instead of a guard. Police are under no obligation to respond to an alarm activation, just because they get a call from a monitoring company.
Also, you pay for the GUARD to attend, not police, so if they 'offer' police response as part of the package, then you should be asking for a discount, as they will obviously not pass on a cut to Police.

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Geektastic

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#1038130 7-May-2014 09:39

tcpdump: Sorry, forgot to mention I'm in Auckland.

In Europe (back in early 2000s) there were many companies that were guaranteeing a 10 minute response during daytime and 2 minutes during nighttime (which was quite impressive).

I guess after 30 minutes they might as well bring a broom to help with the cleaning, eh?

Ha. I agree - you should try living in the Bundu! I rang the AA a few weeks ago at the weekend with a flat battery. The fastest they could get anyone to me was 4 hours....!

xpd

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#1038177 7-May-2014 10:44

Check their process of identification as well.... had a case years ago where we set off our alarm by accident, security company called within 2 mins to ask what happened - said it was an accident. That was it. No asking who I was, if I had the required pass phrase (which they were supposed to ask for on every activation alert).
"Yes, why, Im the burglar taking everything from this property, no, dont bother sending out a guard to check, we'll be long gone"

XPD / Gavin

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nakedmolerat

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#1038192 7-May-2014 11:10

xpd: Check their process of identification as well.... had a case years ago where we set off our alarm by accident, security company called within 2 mins to ask what happened - said it was an accident. That was it. No asking who I was, if I had the required pass phrase (which they were supposed to ask for on every activation alert).
"Yes, why, Im the burglar taking everything from this property, no, dont bother sending out a guard to check, we'll be long gone"

I dont think pass phrase is necessary especially if they call your mobile?

xpd

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#1038201 7-May-2014 11:26

nakedmolerat:
xpd: Check their process of identification as well.... had a case years ago where we set off our alarm by accident, security company called within 2 mins to ask what happened - said it was an accident. That was it. No asking who I was, if I had the required pass phrase (which they were supposed to ask for on every activation alert).
"Yes, why, Im the burglar taking everything from this property, no, dont bother sending out a guard to check, we'll be long gone"

I dont think pass phrase is necessary especially if they call your mobile?

Ever left your mobile at home ? ;)

But no, youre right there, but some security companies might decide to ring the home number first ignoring what youve told them ;)

XPD / Gavin

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Jase2985

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#1038495 7-May-2014 17:52

We use alarm NZ because family members work there.

No guarantee on response time but when we did get broken into my wife and brother in law were called within minutes to confirm it was a break in.

Neighbours called the police and neighbors were over before anyone else arrived

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#1038545 7-May-2014 19:17

I can't remember which company I used when I lived in Auckland. They were quick to respond though and got to know my cat really well

Ragnor

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#1038902 8-May-2014 11:49

tcpdump: Sorry, forgot to mention I'm in Auckland.

In Europe (back in early 2000s) there were many companies that were guaranteeing a 10 minute response during daytime and 2 minutes during nighttime (which was quite impressive).

I guess after 30 minutes they might as well bring a broom to help with the cleaning, eh?

How would they actually have a 2min response time unless the security guards patrol car was parked on your street outside your house?

Unless you mean something different by response time than a security guard turning up at your place?

tcpdump

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#1038904 8-May-2014 11:53

They had a car normally parked 500m up the road (unless of course they were attending a callout in which case I assume they would have broken the SLA?)

Also, back in the days, they could break the road rules without any (real) consequences.