the Price of Installation of Home Security

This is the monthly charge for central station monitoring services from a local alarm company. The installation of the security system was free, but I had to agree to use their services for a 5-year period in order to get the free equipment. The alarm covers all entry doors in and out of the house, and there are motion sensors on the first floor and in the basement. In addition to the two entry doors, eight windows are alarmed. The alarm system patches through my telephone line, and if there is an entry without someone putting the passcode into the keypad, they will call the house first. If no one answers, or someone answers, but fails to give the right password, the police are dispatched to the house. They also detect power outages and follow the same procedure in the event of a power failure.

I love the peace of mind that this offers, but truthfully I am very disappointed in how well it works once the police have been dispatched. The alarm was triggered during some recent construction work I had done, and the alarm company did exactly as they were supposed to do. They did not get an answer at the house and dispatched the police. They reached me on my cell phone to advise me of their actions. I came straight home. It was nearly an hour before the police arrived and I believe that, in that time, I could have been completely cleaned out -- or even worse. The alarm itself is really loud and might scare someone off or call attention to the house, but without a police response, I feel that paying for this service is pointless. That is nothing against the alarm company itself -- they did their job as promised.

Find out how seriously your local police takes house alarm calls. Apparently people accidentally trigger them so often, they are not terribly concerned when one goes off. If you have a large pet, you can get motion sensors that will not detect anything under as much as 120 pounds. You might want to consider paying for the alarm system itself outright so you are not obligated to any alarm company for any specific period of time. This way you can cancel if you are not happy with the service. In my area, most of the home heating oil companies also do alarm installations and monitoring.