False alarms

I've always thought enhanced verification was a pretty lame way to reduce false alarms. Yes, it will reduce false alarms, but for all the wrong reasons. It treats symptoms, rather than the underlying problem.

For those who are unfamiliar with enhanced verification, it consists of having the central station call people until it can find someone who says not to dispatch the police. Sooner or later, the central will often find someone who will do that, and all too often, that "someone" is not in any position to know whether the alarm is false or not. At which point, the central station cheers and says, "Another false alarm prevented! Look at what a good job we're doing."

Intelligent filtering, or just precision guesswork? Let's face it, if the central station does not dispatch on an alarm, for whatever reason, 99% of the time they will have made the right decision. So does enhanced verification really work? Consider these enhanced verification scenarios:

1. Burglar alarm signal from a residence during the daytime. No answer at the premises, so the central calls the owner's cell phone and asks whether they should call the police. The homeowner says, "No, it's probably the housekeeper." The owner isn't at the premises. He has no way of knowing whether it's the housekeeper or not. But by choosing not to call the police, odds are 99% he's made the right decision. So long as he isn't really getting robbed, everybody's happy.
2. Nighttime burglar alarm call from a business. The central calls the owner, gets no answer, and calls the next name on the list, who is an employee. The employee tells the operator, "No, don't call the police, the owner raised hell when he got his last false alarm bill from the city. Call me if it goes off again." The central cheerfully chalks up another success story for enhanced verification.

Finding excuses not to dispatch is not false alarm reduction.

- badenov

I'm not a proponent for this thingy that they're doing, I'm just saying that the way Irv Fischer explained how HE was doing it, looked like a great way to handle the false alarm problem. He's taken something that was mandated by the authorities and made it work for the betterment of all concerned. And you're saying that the third party Centrals would never accept this. They didn't have a choice .....up there. They were told that they were going to get fined for false alarms. It was up to them what they were going to do about it for the sake of self preservation. Fining the Centrals was a good idea from the point of view of the authorities because they had fewer entitys to deal with, compared to fining hundreds of thousands of end users. The centrals didn't want to lose their customer base by just simply handing down the fines that were levied, so they came up with some pretty innovative alarm handling procedures that, according to Irv, were surpprisingly accurate and sucessful in cutting down the false alarms to never seen before levels. I wish I could remember all the details but it was some time ago that Irv finally got tired of the Bass shit and left the group. So this ISN'T "untried" it's actually working very well. And ..... Irv does do third party monitoring.

But ......... even WITHOUT the fining of Central stations, the procedures that Irv is using handling alarm signals could well be used by Centrals under ANY circumstances. You'd just have to see some of the statistics that Irv was brandying about when we were questioning him about it. I'm sure he would be more than happy to talk to you or anyone about it. Irv was a real nice and helpful guy.

And ..... just as the alarm installers don't want to be the ones to be fined, you wouldn't expect that the Centrals would either. Since the public usually doesn't have a say or even knowledge that the alarm fine process is being considered, They're the easiest target that every one in the alarm industry automatically points at. NOT ME .... fine the end user says the installer. NOT ME ..... fine the end user says the Central Stations. ..... What if the public were asked who to fine ...... what do you think the unanomous decision would be, if given the choice between the Centrals, installers or the public?

Also, what if the authorities were given the choice between administrating fines to end users, alarm installers or central stations ..... which do you think they'd choose? Presuming that they had all the details of the amount of work involved with each of those choices. Just because no one has thought of it around here, doesn't mean that it' isn't a better idea.

"Nomen Nescio" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@dizum.com...

Read my last sentence. ECV reduces **dispatches**, unnessary dispatches. It does not reduce false alarms, false signals, or what ever they may be called.

Agreed

Close but not exact. There are two numbers called. Premise and then either a second line, or cellphone and if neither exsist, the premise number a second time. (Anyone can come up with the reason why this will work to eliminate an unnessary dispatch.) Then dispatch. We are not calling everyone on the contact list. That is done after dispatch.

Sooner or later, the central will often find

That someone is at the premise or is the owner's cellphone

and all too often, that "someone" is not in any

Again, that someone is in control of the property and knows the property and the activity at the property better than we do. They know that they have guest, they know what time their kids get home from school, they know what day and time the maid gets there, etc. If they have just left the house, they tell us don't dispatch and turn around to close that interior garage door that popped open, eliminating an unnecessary dispatch. The next day, if they are at work and know there should be no activity, they tell us to dispatch. False alarm, probably, attempted burglary, maybe. End result, cut unnessary dispatches by 50%.

At which point, the

More like "another unnecessary dispatch prevented"

And law enforcement recognized that by looking at the numbers. Last month

400 unnecessary dispatces, this month 200 unnessary dispatches.

Or acting on the instruction of the customer?

People are instructing the industry to do this without ECV. How many times is the premise called, then dispatched, then contact call to persons cell only to be told to cancel dispatch. All that is happening with ECV is that the normal procedures, that has been in place for years, have been reconfigured to call the cell prior to dispatch instead of immediately following dispatch.

That is poor security management to start with. An employee should never ever have the ability to cancel an alarm unless they are the manager, at which point he/she will take the responsibility. An employee could be setting things up for internal theft.

That direction comes from the alarm company, not the CS. They act on the alarmcos/customers directions. If that is the direction, it is wrong to start with. If the CS is the alarmco, then they need to re-evaluate their own policy with the customer.

Again, I agree. But lets take a short walk down memory lane. I am not going to go through all the blood bath debates about "no response" across the nation between the industry and public safety. However, this issue was hemorrhaging and the bleeding needed to be stopped an stopped now. How is/was this going to get accomplished. It wasn't until there was alot of investigation into verification and dispatch history, putting this together with crime statistics from the IACP and a near year long testing program by two of the larger national CS. Does the industry have an immediate fix for the false alarm issue. Absolutely not. You cannot fix the errors of 130 years over night and you will never get rid of unresponsible human beings, whether they are the alarmco and their employees or the customers. Example: How do you fix a situation where the Jones, a model customer for years, just got a new cat. They went away for the weekend, leaving the cat in the home with plenty of food and water and a clean litter box. They didn't even think about the motion detector. Do we dispatch on that motion the first hour after they have left. Or do we call them on their cell prior to dispatch, only to learn about the cat, and are able to put that zone in test, until they return. Hence, no dispatch. This did not correct the false alarm problem. Adding a pet immune motion or getting rid of the cat would do that, but it helped stop the bleeding by not sending the police. As the industry learns more, more can be done, such as the CPO1 standards. The more that public safety knows about where they can get assistance from the industry (SIAC, Alarm Associations, FARA, etc.) and what options are available, the more they are willing to come to the table. EHV is not a false alarm fix and was never meant to be, but it has proven to reduce unnessary dispatches. Are the dispatches, they go to, going to be false? You can bet they are 99% of the time. But if they are going to 30-40-50% less calls than they were last year and they are not going to the same building

25 times in the same weekend, than I say the hemorrhaging has been slowed enough to continue working on the wound without being threatened by "no response". Of course there are pros and cons and there will be supporters and opponents. Fining people, whoever they are isn't the fix. No response isn't the fix. There is no one item that is the fix. It will take a combination of items to accomplish what is either acceptable or fool proof enough to get around all the "stupid human tricks" ECV is an important number to that combination.

"I hang out at Sumo wrestling matches watching Norm"

Watch that Bob...I resemble that remark.

Norm Mugford

I choose Polesoft Lockspam to fight spam, and you?

I guess I'm one of those "old bastards," too :-).

My involvement in the field was from 1974 through 1990, then from 2001 through Oct. of 2004. You know the rest I suppose, but the false alarm issues really haven't changed much from my vantage point. Most of them are caused by people who either don't care or who don't understand their system well enough.

Alarm companies really should take more time to train their clients, but let's be honest, the smaller firms usually do a good job of training because their focus is on personal service, personal relationships. The bigger firms give their tech crews a daily quota, which does not allow much time for end user training--sad to say.

I'll read the report and then I'll come back and comment. I just had to confess to the world that I'm on "old bastard," too :-).

Al

I haven't seen what he is doing. If it is working for them, score one for our side through his efforts.

That is because it was after the fact. Across the board, everyone is trying different approaches and it is in a proactive mode rather than a reactive mode. Usually, when a program is getting off the ground, everyone needs to be, first, aware of it, and then support it, so there is full participation, or it doesn't fly. At that point, even a great program could be caulked up as a failure.

They were

The hammer came down and they had to live or die with the cards dealt to them. Their fault for not being proactive to begin with. Sounds like Irv learned quickly how to make apple sauce out of the smashed apple. I am sure his program has been looked at, as how to deal with these things, since Canada (Toronto) was one of the first when it came to law enforcement aggressively addressing the FA issue.

I understand the point, but I personally don't usually look for the easiest way out as the best solution of all. After all, isn't that how we got here in the first place?

Did they not share this with the US or is Canada keeping a secret?

That is understandable.

Do you know if he belongs to the CSAA?

Lets see if we can get a number. I will talk to anyone. I have even talked to Bass and even in person, he just doesn't know it.

Not necessarily true all the time. There is a difference, when it comes to public awareness, when it is passed as an ordinance, which is best, or a policy of some egos. Ordinances go through the public at first and second readings and then voted on. Policies are just enacted as of a certain date. The ones that miss both are the ones that aren't aware of things going on around them until it is to late and then just bitch about it. Sorta like the ones that don't vote for president.

NOT ME .... fine the end

You expect an answer?

The ones that they have a legal ground for enforcement on. The user. If the user doesn't pay, they stop responding, and lien their property. They have no legal recourse on the alarmco or the CS. If they stop responding to an address because a CS in Pakistan didn't pay a fine, the city might find themselves in legal deep shit over a $50 fee. If they cut off that CS from dispatching to the city, how can the PD notify the residents, that may be using that central, that they are temporarily out of service? If you live in an area that has an ordinance, you are legally bound by that ordinance. That CS is not.

Presuming that they had all the

That is the reason everyone needs to get to the table and work it out. This us against them philosophy doesn't accomplish much. That is why Salt Lake City is where it is at. It got personal.

Bob, I think it's fairly simply myself. Fine those people who have the keypad or fob in their hand. They not only hold the keys to the alarm that's falsing, but they also hold the purse or wallet that must pay for the service. With that said, there are shoddy companies everywhere, for sure, and these firms should pay for their huge number of continual mistakes. The trick is devising a way to charge the right culprit, not to create a one-size-fits-all solution, which is what cities and counties want to do. Charge one party and let the alarmco and user fight it out.

There is no easy answer to this. Because the brunt of the false alarms that I've seen from first-hand experience involve the end user, I vote "charge the user and let him go to the alarmco and sort it out."

Al

It's been my experience that few things piss off the cops (or city officials) faster than when the alarm industry representative starts drawing a distinction between false alarms and false dispatches. They will look at you like you're retarded, or worse, like you're trying to put something over on them.

I know what you are talking about, but most people don't. I think it's counterproductive to play word games with the general public. When the public hears the term "false alarms," they think about the number of times the alarm industry calls the police. They could care less how many signals you received that did not result in a police dispatch. We should speak their language.

I went looking through Google and found a couple of his posts, which appear below. He sounds like an interesting guy, too bad he isn't posting any more. These are from about seven years ago.

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Our marketplace went to $73.50/dispatch back in 1996. We moved all our customers to private response charging them $4-$5/mo. We could have left them with police and upped their monthly fee to $7 but basic economics and a good guard capability convinced me otherwise. I did this precisely for the reason you give. I did NOT want either my customer or myself 'scared' to use their system. For this $, they are guaranteed they will get 4 dispatches in any 12 month period. NO, I'm not crazy. I follow up every darned false to make sure whatever caused it wont happen again. But I'm prepared to eat a 2nd if need be. It takes guts to tell all your customers this is how it is but when it's over, you have a viable business and a happy customer base.

Whoever and wherever you are, once there's an onerous response cost in your area, you should convert it to monthly RMR, just like your monitoring, or suffer the consequences.

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A word of friendly advice. I cut my teeth in the business on false alarms. Spent several years speaking to empty rooms. Had to put up with leaders of our think tank who couldn't think. Never get too serious about false alarms. If you keep it light, you might attact some interest. Since it became fashionable at association levels, Bonifas has taken on the crusade. I couldn't take national meetings any more where the most serious issue was, "We shouldn't call them false alarms--it gives the industry a negative image. They're not really false. Something set off the alarm. Let's call them loose window or door alarms. How about just 'nuisance' alarms."

We have a single, smallish city called Saskatoon that implemented the #900 number. Canadians are quiet folk. The alarm industry accepted it. It's $50, (US$32), per call. It's got its humour too. I got a bill last month for 2 calls for the same address 5 minutes apart. When I checked the automation software, there's a note from the operator on the first call saying the police warned here there's a $50 charge so she better be sure she wants the dispatch. She says I'll call you back and checks with a keyholder. The keyholder says they want the police sent. So my dingaling calls back and dispatches. I haven't decided if it's cheaper to pay the 2nd call or contest it with my payment for the other 3 that month. We have other ploys too. According to our bylaws, only a 'recognized' monitoring station can be billed. If we get the keyholder to call, there's no charge. They can call 911. If there's a way, the alarm professional will find it.

Toronto originally approved a #900 plan. But the alarm industry in Toronto challenged it on very narrow grounds and won. The police were pissed because the RBOC promised them they would get approval. So they went out and set up their own admin department in the PD and started billing $73.50 a pop. By the time the RBOC got the proposal changed to make it legal, the police had long passed the point of no return. Why did the RBOC get so interested? Toronto was dispatching 75,000 calls per year when the #900 was due to kick in. The Bell gets 5% of the gross. The gross was going to be $5Mil. Not bad for adding a few lines to the bottom of the monthly phone bill.

I pay Toronto about $2100 per month for my measly 30 calls, (down from 900 a month before the bylaw). I pay Saskatoon between $50 and $100. My staff say they'd rather deal with a PD directly than a #900 service. One of the major reasons is reconciliation of the response charges. When I get Saskatoon, I have to run a report to find a dispatch to Saskatoon during that time period. The #900 invoice does not include any details about the response, only the date and time. The police send us the address. It's much easier to deal with. Nick, it's bad enough to refer to me when talking about false alarms. When you refer to Simon, people dont just fall asleep, they run away.

He's right though, (in a nutty kind of way). Before the stations had to pay for response in Toronto, I personally measured the 10 major false alarm rates for the association. I wasn't supposed to know who they were and truthfully there was one I was never sure of. ADT never allowed their data to be used but ha ha on them, all I had to do was subtract the other 9 from the cop's totals and boom, I had ADT's. But that's another story. Before the bylaw, one station was measuring over 0.9 FDSY. I know from a well placed source, they're down to under 0.6 now. Most of the other stations went from 0.7-0.75 to the mid

50's, low 60's. We thought we were doing great at 0.61 before the bylaw but I managed to get my rate down to an astonishing 0.45 for the 6 months immediately following the bylaw. At the risk of making a lot more enemies on this .ng than I already have, IT WAS THE STATIONS THAT HAD THE MOST IMPACT. We simply put more effort into determing the alarm false than we did before. The dealers stopped fighting stations like mine and actually started helping us. Many requested we call them before dispatching. Some have specific instructions to this day we can not dispatch without their explicit permission. This is somewhat time sensitive and the operator themselves have tremendous latitude should they decide the alarm looks more real than false. I even gave them permission to call the Toronto police at $73.50 per call if they felt the alarm looked real. I'm real proud of my staff because since Sept '96, they haven't guessed wrong. Even if they did, we dispatch guards anyway. I dont know what the numbers are any more but for the first 12 months of the program in Toronto, dispatches dropped by 50%. That was pretty cool because I personally pulled 10-15% of them myself.

As for the fly-on-the wall stuff, been there, done that. This is chaos boys. Forget the comspiracy theory. It's every man for himself. It's amazing how large MS's could make such bad decisions and still be successful. Here's my personal observation. You have to be the stupidest, most brain dead manager in the whole world to send an 'impartial' analysis of the customer's options to him and ask him to choose one. This is the height of lunacy. I know. I've experienced it from both sides. Steve, if you're reading out there, I really felt sorry for you but you had to prove this the hard way. Although I thought your analysis really sucked, you took your lumps like a man. For that, you have my earnest respect.

As for the dealers, too many listened to their customers and not their own business sense. For those that dealt with the middle marketplace and not the high-end customers, they told me they polled their customers and the customers wanted to pay by the dispatch. So they told me to bill them by the response or they told me to call a private guard they would pay directly. Well, if you're a businessman in the alarm industry, you dont need me to explain what happened when those alarm companies rememberd to bill the customer. The customer says it was the alarm company's fault. An immediate new marketing angle was born. $22 per month including unlimited response. That cut another $2-$3 per month from the installing dealer's bottom line. That was $2-$3 he just couldn't afford to lose.

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75%???? Not in our lifetime, (yours may be longer than mine but we can definitely rule out the next 10 years). F/D rates are about 80-85% lower than F/A rates but since we cant agree on transformers, we're not going to get agreement on the distinction between F/A and F/D.

The best F/D rate I've ever seen was 95% and I think it was rigged. I'm not including certain alarm monitoring companies that claim the inverse, (miss enough reals and you can accomplish a lot of false alarm reduction).

If you do the math, a 75% rate is 400% better than a 95% rate. Wouldn't that be something?!?!?!

Amen....

Norm Mugford

I choose Polesoft Lockspam to fight spam, and you?

"Nomen Nescio" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@dizum.com...

You are right, but it really depends on the venue. If it is the least bit adversarial, the cop types will want control immediately. That is their nature, especially if they think your playing games with them. When there is a partnership and working toward a resolve, terminology, view points, and the like are on the table so that everyone is talking the same language. When you admit that there is a false alarm (signal) problem and that what they are actually doing is responding unnecessarily, the ice starts to melt. They totally understand that false alarms are not their problem but the amount of unnessary dispatces are.When you start talking about ways to cut down on the amount of dispatches, then they listen. They don't know about, or do they care about single technology motion detectors vs dual techs. They are only concerned about the amount of times they are called on to dispatch. "We went to the same location 20 times in one weekend!" On the other hand, there was a comment from one of the departments when their city was testing ECV. There was an immediate drop in the number of unnecessary dispatches (yah, I play the word game, but that is OK, my city understands the difference). They also saw the immediate loss of revenue from false alarm fines. The city manager came over to the PD to find out what was going on. When looking at the records the amount of fines being issued coincided with the enactment of ECV. I am not so sure he was happy with the loss of revenue. Where the PD does not see those funds to off set their cost, the city misses the fines coming into the general fund. Does the police budget go down with the elimination of false alarms? No. Does the general fund go down with the elimination of false alarms? Yes. Don't even try it!! I am not advocating the existance of false alarms. It was just an observation that someone, in the city, did notice it.

Lack of amicable communication, or no communication at all?

I know, most will just sit and bitch about things instead of walking into their local PD or Fire/Rescue and introducing themselves and offer assistance. In our city, it initially took dealing with the alarm unit coordinator after introducing myself. He was a little stand offish and there were only a couple of times he contacted me for info. I didn't really have a good feel for his interest in working together. I got at call one day from the new coordinator. He introduced himself to me. He told me that he found my number in the files and it was noted "Good industry contact". Made me feel better about the limited contact I had with the first coordinator and it opened the door to be part of a good program in our city. I am sure there are others they converse with, but I know that I will be one of them, giving me an opportunity to help steer the ship.

I think it's

Of course it is. They are mostly sheep doing what the city tells them to do and you can bet the PD is playing word games with them anyway, when it comes to selling them the PD's wants and wishes. When you wear a badge, selling is easy.

When the

Yep, that is what they have been told.

Isn't that what this thread is about? Who should pay for false alarms? We are talking their language, "I don't wanta pay nothin". I think the industy has been listening to it for to long. Maybe the answer is to not take any customer that is not willing to spend the time, along with all potential users, to become properly educated and is also willing to pay for what it actually takes to design, install, monitor, and service this pandora's box of potential false alarms, if it is not properly designed, installed, monitored, and serviced properly. Unfortunately, we are far past that, from ever happening industry wide. As long as this industy chooses to deal with short term numbers rather than long term careers, we that care must continue to look for a solution that will satisfy everyone, even if it is short term to give us time to work on the big picture. (Soapbox?) :o}

>

As usual the only way to make those that don't strive to better their FA rate, is to make it costly if they don't. And that's the dilemma. If it were "always" the end user at fault, then fining them would be the catalyst necessary to make them change. But it's not always the end user, I'd guess that more often than the "industry" wants to admit, it's due to improper training and improper application and quality of product.

So, if you fine the alarm company and it's not their fault, or the end user and it's not THEIR fault .... who the hell gets to be fined? I think that THAT is the part of Toronto's plan that takes care of that conflict. It doesn't make any difference which of either of the two are at fault. The central gets fined. The central passes it on to the alarm company, who's got to pass it on to the end user. If the end user is at fault, he pays. If there's a conflict, it's between the alarm installer and the end user to either come to an agreement or part ways. If the installer isn't doing good installs, and makes no effort to correct his ways, he's eventually going to lose more and more end users because of conflicts with his customers. If he doesn't pay the Central, they drop him. If an end user continues to be negligent, but goes on to another alarm company, it's going to benefit the new alarm company to do a "due dilligence" on past history of "takeovers" so that they don't get a "lemon" account. And if a central get's an inquiry from an existing installer to take over his accounts it's going to pay the Central to do a "due dilligence" on the installer before they take on a problem installer.

By fining the end user, there's never any incentive to the installer to use better methods or eqipment or training procedures. By fining the alarm installer, there's no incentive for the end user to learn their system or remain aware of the conditions of their premise.

( Just a note that I'm just playing devil's advocate here)

Ok ,understood; however, its the end user who ultimately puts the pressure on their alarm company to pay up when the problem is clearly an equipment problem. Agreed, its almost impossible to get any large company to actually pay; however, that in turn puts pressure on the end user to dump that company and seek out a more customer oriented one. And if it's the client's fault (as it seems to be in most cases), I would think they would quickly learn be more careful next time, or if they didn't understand why it happened, then seek out the assistance of their alarmco to explain the cause of the false. Either way the problem gets dealt with directly, and the city is "paid" for the use of police time (although they might not see it that way and care only that they have to respond to falses....)

I'm not trying to take away from the way Toronto does it, since it does seem to work; however, the old adage that the "abuser pays" seems to also be a fair and equitable way to do things. And it's certainly an easier way to administer things without getting the centrals into passing along costs which only adds to their administrative overheads.....

No ?

RHC

I just have this "notion" that every alarm installers is saying that most FA are caused by end users because the installers actually 'believe' that their installs, product, quality, training is "the best" ..... when really it's not. By eliminating them from the "inconvenience" of the fine process, it absolves them of all responsibility ..... in their mind .... whether they're doing the right thing ... or not. Every installer that

** IS ** doing the right thing and is ** already ** using quality equipment, methods, procedures and follow up, the fining of dealers will not affect them. They're already making the effort. But it sure will affect the baddies and regardless if either category of installer has bad users, they're going to clean them up or clean them out. Those that don't, will go out of business, ( probably more so from not wanting to deal with the fining process which will add to the "detail " work ... which the lack of detail , is what's causing them to do poor installs to begin with.) And ..... in the interest of keeping the administration to a minimum, with the maximum amount of return ( $ ) for the authorities, it makes sense for them to only have to administrate to the smaller amount of Centrals than thousands of end users. If nothing else it shows and effort by the ENTIRE industry to cooperate and gets the ENTIRE industry involved with no absolution of ANYONE. EVERYONE is involved and everyone will have to cooperate ..... no one is excused. It's not a blame issue ..... it's getting everyone included in the effort. Centrals, installers, endusers, authorities. Done any other way simply absolves all the others of any blame and, in fact could be an incentive to become even more lax than they already are.

I know ** I ** could handle both processes.... being fined direct or through a Central, because my FA are kept minimal. I follow up with the end user on every one. They KNOW ... they're going to get a call from me and we're going to work out a plan to correct the problem. Stop reports on trouble zones, move motion detectors, better control of people or animals. Reminders on how to operate the system. Whatever it takes. End users don't want false alarms either but if there is no incentive from the installer, just like you and me, they're not going to take the time from their busy lives to effect changes. Even with fines, some will simply just pay and continue with their normal routines. If the dealer is getting fined, you can bet it wont. And if the dealer wont .... if his Central monitoring is at risk, ..... that's HIS incentive.

even ask for or want daly or even weekly reports on the signals from their accounts. What does THAT tell you? If the installers don't care, why should the end users. So that alone, could be the reason why "most FA come from the end user" that we hear repeatedly ..... ..... funnny, .... but that seem to be coming from alarm installers. DUUUUHHH! How convenient that there's not too much credibility in that "statistic" or if it IS true ..... WHY is it true? What AREN'T they doing to change it? And WHY aren't they?

All they need is an incentive ($).

"Everywhere Man" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

I'll go along with the training part as the #1 problem. Reason I believe that is that statistics show, the majority of the user problems are at the keypad and entry/exit zone. This is strictly a training issue, if the user chooses to be responsible to begin with. With the newer technologies available and the standards that are now implemented the equipment is pretty solid. The percentage of equipment related alarms is fairly low without the inclusion of outside circumstances. Is it installed properly, yes, probably, maybe, no? They all pertain to even the best of us. What was done properly yesterday could change overnight making the application totally wrong without you even knowing about it(changes at the premise by the customer) until the system falsed. Of course there are systems out there that will make the headlines of "What idiot did this", but I am not sure they are the majority of the problem either. If the problem was more on the central station or on the installation company, I feel I would hear about it more at the false alarm schools I teach at our PD. Over the last few years, I have only heard, from the users attending the school, that they had a problem with the company or CS on a very few occassions. The biggest one is that the CS didn't verify the alarm prior to dispatch. We all know what causes that. The user generally knows what caused their alarm. Again, it is usually their fault, but, in alot of cases, could have been avoided with training, but only if they choose to pass on the training to all using the system and be responsible themselves.

By eliminating them from the

Sure it will. Even the best has a false alarm ratio.

And that should only mean that they will be paying less often than the guy that isn't doing the right thing. Lets take two companys, one is a model and the other is a ....pick one. With the escalating fine structure in the ordinance, the good company ends up with 5 dispatches to one location in an

8 hour period of time, one night, due to a let's say a ballon left after the party. 1= free 2 = $50 3 = $100 4 = $200 5 = $200. That is $550 possible fine. Now this is not very realistic since the problem would probably get taken care of after the first or possibly the second call, but it could easily happen to a good company/good client. Worse case scenerio, should the CS be responsible, they don't necessarily see the alarm history prior to dispatch, should the alarmco be responsible, after all they do all the right things and their false alarm ratio is well below 1%. What ever happens the CS has admin and cost, passes it down to alarmco, who than has admin and costs to pass it down to end user, who admits fault, so it goes back up to alarmco and then back up to CS. The bad company does the same only more of it. I guess these companies would turn a negative into a possitive by charging more for monitoring due to increase in admin costs.

I am not sure they have authority to collect fines from them. Maybe they do, I am just not sure. One of the problem I can see is how would they enforce it. A third party mon itoring center with 100 dealers owes mega dollars from fines incurred by one dealer in a two week period. The CS doesn't want to pay for this deadbeats problems. Does the PD cut off this CS, which is servicing 99 other dealers, who are not causing problems, or do they cut off taking signals from the CS for just the one deadbeat. Then what do they do with the deadbeats customers that really were not part of the problem. It seems like it could get pretty sticky.

I will be back to comment on the rest of this post. I wanta understand more on these different angles Gotta run.

If nothing else it shows and effort by the ENTIRE industry to