I know...the latest acquisition happened about a month ago, but Devcon appears ready to make a big impact on the market in South Florida.
Bell South Security from Protection One: A salesman recently told me that they have dropped the 3 month up front monitoring fees for conversions, and no longer require the $49 conversion fee.
That leaves the monthly monitoring fees for converions at $19.95 per month with Bell South.
It's hard to beat what they offer in a basic system, using Ademco products. They include a smoke detector, 3 door/window sensors, cell backup, control panel, wireless touchpad which makes the entire system wireless, and a pet friendly motion detector, for $299.99, with monitoring for $31.95 if you are an exisitng Bell South Customer of any kind.
There are times... I have one customer who is paying 113.87 per month on a five year annually auto renewing after initial term contract, and he is thrilled with it. He also has two other systems with me, and is asking me to lay one out for a fourth site for him soon, and yes he has had alarms installed in other markets by other companies so he's not an unsophisticated customer.
There are some other circumstances of course, so blanket statements don't make sense from either end of the spectrum.
Quite true Bob ! Blanket statements ARE generalizations, and generalizations are just that - general statements that don't tell the whole story story all the time. But I see so many instances where the misuse of long term contracts causes unnecessary grief and expense to clients that IMO they totally overshadow the few legitimate uses. I'm glad that you can turn this industry trend to your customer's advantage, but one (or even a few) examples does not mitigate the harm done in the other cases. Nothing in life is totally good or totally bad ! But when all is put on the "scales of justice" (so to speak), in judging this industry practice, it comes out (almost) totally loaded against the end user.
I think what bothers me most about this personally, is the fact that the end user (generally) gets nothing in return for giving up his right to choose for a number of years. The biggest mystery to me is why the public lets us get away with it, with rarely a peep about it until something goes wrong. And THAT is why it will continue unabated ! I sometimes think if ADT and other nationals didn't have long term contracts to hide behind, their companies would largely fall apart !!!!!
We're not the only industry that does it either. I just had to send a registered letter to Ontario Energy telling them I didn't want to opt into their contractual rate plan for the pricing of natural gas. I had to take action to prevent being locked into a year long contract if I did nothing within 30 days - this after I refused their high pressure tactics to lock into a five year contract ! This is far worse than what happens in our industry. There the consumer has no choice, and will be bound into a contract unless he takes positive action. At least in our industry, the consumer has a full choice about things generally speaking....
I'm going to see what the BBB has to say about this "negative option marketing" of natural gas !
RHC
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Yeah, right ! That is the industry standard price for the monthly when it includes the proverbial "free system". Otherwise, it's pretty much ADT's standard price regardless of the upfront. It's also $7 over the North American norm of $24.95 monthly. It's anything but inexpensive !
I have to assume you said that "tongue in cheek". Otherwise rates are drastically different in your end of town, or someone hasn't done his shopping. Rates like those leave themselves wide open to the discounters and the low ball monitoring stations. Oh... I forgot....lucky for them, they signed a long term contract and now they're stuck !
That's just one of the reasons why EVERY other company around here does a booming business in ADT takeovers..
RHC
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