Got a monitored alarm and just got the renewal price of the contract of £598 which struck me as steep. Never thought to shop around and can't seem to find any comparison sites for this. Anyone swapped their monitoring company for a better price?
Cheers
Sadly this type of thing is par for the course in many building services (contruction industry) markets - the same sort of thing happens with commercial systems for security, smoke/fire and especially equipment/energy monitoring for building managers and their teams.
The OEM supplier charges a low rate (sometimes at a loss) to buy the equipment, but because it is either not compatible with other makes or not completely so and requires either specialist monitoring/repair staff or replacement parts only they provide, they've now got you over a barrel, especially if they provide off-site monitoring (as your security system appears to have), and thus they feel comfortable charging high rates from year 2 onwards, because the cost to change is still way higher than paying the subs for another 10-15 years.
Rather like computer printer manufacturers who charge (say) £40 for a new printer which comes with short-filled ink cartridges and then charge £25 per replacement ink cartridge, with other replacement parts (plus the unit only has a 1 or 2 year warranty) being expensive and often can only be fitted by a trained person. That and spares are only arounf for about 5 years before either disappearing altogether or going up to ridiculous prices.
Lovely wheeze. Bad for most people.
The best thing for building services systems is to either find systems/equipment that needs little to no off site monitoring and that is very reliable long term, or is reasonably priced and reliable but uses generic systems, especially the software, so doesn't need to be attended to by specialists from one firm or one who covers your region (and thus has a monopoly or near one).
I'm no expert on such things (I dealt with the mechanical engineering side, not the electrical engineering side and have been out of the industry for 4 years now), but these days I would have expected some systems to be more generic and to be able to interface with smart phones via the internet and an app, so end users like you can monitor them, as long as the phone is on.
I live in a low crime area and thankfully don't need a security system for my home, but hopefully someone else here may have some experience with one. I agree that it's only worth getting a system if you have a crime problem in your area and need some extra protection for valuables/against damage, as having one when others don't may indicate your home being a 'worthwhile target' as there's something valuable and/or easy to steal.
It's often at least as good to improve the security of your gates, doors (including garage if you have one) and windows over the longer term, or use sensor-driven security lights at certain entrances, which normally don't need to be monitored.
|
