Here you go housing starts in the dumper

That's the highest stress, lowest paying, least desirable area to work in. IMO

RHC: Oh, I dunno if that is always the case Grant. Residential accounts generate the same revenue as commercial account by and large, but without the constant need for changes in zoning and calling lists, endlless false alarms due to no one in particular being in charge, constant calls to change things around as they change their offices. I only have 40 commercial accounts in my total of 1100, and by far and away, they cause a lot of after sale calls for service. If my residential accounts were anywhere near as troublesome, I could never handle this volume of customers.

I guess if you have to peddle door to door to get business, and offer phoney "free systems" to survive, then I would certainly agree with you. But for any real security company, I have to disagree !

Who the hell is Grant?

I was talking about new construction working for builders, with no guarantee you'll get the monitoring.

RHC: Whoops....stuck my foot in it again. Sorry, I meant Graham, not Grant !!!!!!

I will still take my commercial industrial accounts any day over residential. Less hassle all the way around. May be different in your area but over here there a pain in the butt and want everything free.

RHC: You said the majic words Nick !! Residential accounts that want everything for free are definately NOT my market. The crowd that buy phoney "free systems", or don't expect to pay fair market price for a system; who don't mind being suckered into overpriced, long term contracts, are a significant minority of people who are....(not necessarily in this order)....unsophisticated, lower economic "class", poor shoppers, easily suckered by unsophisticated adverstising; simply have no money and won't likely ever have; don't think things through past the end of their nose; or are just plain downright stupid !

I don't deal with these types of customers from the get go....it's pretty easy to send these types packing within a couple of minutes of starting to talk to them. They usually end up with either ADT or worse yet Alarmforce....

So ...yes....comparing the situation where you have to deal with these kinds of customers, versus dealing with commercial accounts, I'd have to agree with you....

(Damn...after 20 years in this business, I'm starting to get awfully crusty.....)

Lol.. I meant what you knew!

Quality residential are hard to find the residential i do have are my business customers homes i did as a courtesy and they knew what they wanted .98% of what I do is commercial with mostly industrail

It's just a lot easier to say that the people who buy these systems would not be my customers to begin with. Sometimes, after they've had one of the cheapie systems for awhile, some of them will become egermeckcated and learn the hard way. Some of those I get occasionally.

See? NOWWW you know why I'm so cranky all the time ....!!!

RHC: Naw....you're not cranky, it's just that you (and I) have been in the business so long that we see how absolutely stupid a lot of people can be ! But no matter how much we rant about it, there will always be loads of shoppers who will go this way, and there will always be loads of "money machine" companies like ADT and outright scammers like Alarmforce who will continue to value a customers money over their security.

That's just the "way of the world" I guess....

You forgot to mention APX to the list

Yeah. Have you noticed that now, after they've broken the law, blatantly lied to consumers, stretched ethics beyond recognition, given the trade a bad name for a number of years and made millions doing it......... NOWWWWW they're suckin up to the NBFAA about how their plan is to now play nice???? And ..... of course the NBFAA (under their new alias, what ever it is) is holding out their tit, ready and willing to accept the wayward child into the family.

Boy, I'm sure glad we have an orgaization like that to represent this trade.