Spoke with a company last week who is paying $225.39 in MONTHLY monitoring fees to one of the big boys. I almost fell off my rocker. I asked three times if it was for a quarter or a half year.. Nope, per MONTH!
Sounds like they have a service agreement
James
That's nothing... when I worked for the largest National co as a commercial sales rep, we regularly "resold" services to existing accounts when a new business moved in, and often charged $10k/yr+ for monitoring/maintenance/fire alarm inspections for very large company owned security/fire/cctv/access control systems, such as a large manufacturing facility or warehouse. Had several new accts that cost us $100k plus (our cost) to install, with customer payments for lease & services well over $10k/yr.
There were also lots of old Wells Fargo systems that had been priced at 3 to
4 times what they should have been, and when our company bought them out, we continued to charge the same fees.Made 60% of the first year ANSC (annual service charges) per 5 yr contract. Made boatloads of money, 'til we caught up with all the "out of service" company-owned commercial accounts.
I'll bet the amount you are speaking about includes maintenance, and probably includes much more than a standard "security" system. We never charged more than $30 for monitoring an individual system, unless it had a UL certificate, and then it was about $60. At least 90% of our commercial accts included maintenance, since all company-owned commercial equipment had mandatory maintenance and/or inspections built into the ANSC.
Sounds like a big place. My highest single premise account per mont is
113.88. Totally leased, OC reports supervised, cell backup, service included. He has another split premise that is actually two seperate systems for 75 and 85 respectively so that "site" draws $160 apx per month. Same level of service.No big deal. A lot of new guys and small companies tend to look at the low basic cost of monitoring and then undersell themselves. Don't do it. You can't afford to give your customers the quality of service they want if you do.
Ya think? js
It depends on what exactly they are monitoring
As a monitoring automation developing company, I can say just one thing: Greatly done!
As you all know we are now in the 21st century. The more we try to go out and "sell" our systems the more competition we will be confronting. But if we try to sell our "services" this is what is going to put us one step ahead. So the more customer orientated services we give the bigger projects we will be able to collect thus leading to higher monitoring charges.
For example: We setup a monitoring station in South Africa. A bank wanted to have two partitions, 1 for the banking division and 1 for the safes downstairs. They wanted to open and close the safe ever 45 minutes of each hour (Safe opens at 09:00 and closes at 09:45, opens at
10:00 and closes at 10:45, etc. upto 17:45). This way they can be sure that the safe is regulated by the security guard throughout the day. The bank system is also backed up by private security guards that charge onsite within 3 minutes of an alarm. Just this one branch is paying around 800-900$US per month for this service. But it really is a great way to make money!Generally the monitoring companies decline such requests meaning a loss of greater money due to there system being insufficient.
So to conclude, I think they are getting extra service which is great for both the customer and the CMS.
Take care
SecurityNovice wrote:
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