Dangers of cheap monitoring
On 4/18/19 I was called out to a Storage facility that had issues with their current fire alarm monitoring company. Because they had not paid their bill the out of state monitoring station began to dispatch fire, police and medical until the man paid his bill.
The storage facility paid 5 years of monitoring upfront to this out of state monitoring station
They were only paying $7 per month to this company and the service was horrible.
When they did not pay another 5 years promptly the monitoring center dispatched the fire department on monday at 9am when no alarm was triggered.
He called in only to be told that they could not talk to him until he paid his bill.
On Tuesday at 9AM the out of state monitoring station dispatched the fire department and the police to the site. Once again there were no alarms at the site and the owner was even more upset. This happened for 3 more times a total of 5 times.
He then paid one month and had to pay a $45 dollar signup fee so they would talk to him.
The owner of the storage facility is a lawyer by trade and was very upset at how unprofessional the monitoring station employees acted.
The moral of this storey is two fold; One, you get what you pay for and two, you would be prudent to use a local central station for your monitoring.
I do not mention the name of the National Monitoring Station although you should be aware that several of these exist in the US and their goal is to make money and here at Peak we have the same goal but we are held to a much higher standard and we would never do what this station did.
The proper procedure and what is code is to notify the owner of the past due payments and if they do not pay we by law need to send a letter to the fire marshal and then we can turn the monitoring off but we do not dispatch fire, medical or police where then is not a real alarm.
Call Larry Love (801) 428 1384 or cell (801) 898 6003 Larry@peakalarm.com for a quote on professional local monitoring. Peak is the only UL listed Monitoring Station with an Alarm Company and a Guard Patrol Division in Salt Lake City.