Media for Need to cut through the BS on Alarm monitoring costs

Need to cut through the BS on Alarm monitoring costs

I am looking for honest, unbiased, unemotional answers to this question. (I know it's Usenet, but one can always hope...)

I currently have a fire & burglary monitoring policy with the local dominant alarm company. I own the equipment and I am responsible for service charges to fix the equipment.

They charge me $36/month for straight Internet monitoring.

National online monitoring companies offer seemingly the same service for $8.95/month. Or 1/4 the cost.

My high-priced local company claims:

- They are big (20,000 customers) - but the national competitor claims 40,000 customers

- Their service center is "local" -- but it's really halfway across the state so does that really mean anything in the day of the Internet

- They are a "security company" vs. competitors being "monitoring" companies. Though not sure what that means or why I care

- They have a 5-star UL-listed center - but the national competitor claims to be UL-listed and it's not clear what 5-stars means and who even grants such certification. Sounds like marketing hype.

- They have 30-second average response time -- but competitor claims the same

- They say they have a better BBB track record than big national competitors - but the competitor claims an A+ BBB rating which can't be too bad

The bottom line is that I can't see one compelling reason to pay 4 times the competitor rate for what seems to be a commodity service.

- I live in a very safe, low crime neighborhood.

- I primarily pay for the monitoring to get the insurance break.

- I don't stay up nights worrying about fires or burglaries and in any case I still have the in-house alarm to warn me of a fire and scare off amateur burgalers.

- I am technically adept and have no problem servicing and programming my system

Seems like worst case perhaps the response time will be a few seconds longer in some rare cases or maybe there is a small chance they will make a mistake -- but the point is that there are so many other failure points in a security system and we are talking about rare events (fire, burglary) anyway.

So, why pay 4 times as much????