recommendations for a CS

Monitoring America Alarm Co-Op, but I am prejudice as I am the General Manager. Check us out at

Ron Wies

I have been using Alarm Telecomunication Center ATC in Wheatland Pa. for many years there UL listed and operators are very friendly ,well trained my customers love them. Contact Kaddie or Lorretta at 1-800-444-2892

I prefer to use local central stations where I can visit and the operators know me. It's a plus during stormy weather that the CS knows a storm is going on. Where are you?

For a start I'd say get one in your area with a good reputation; and one that really wants to earn your business. Make certain that it is easy for them to reach you and visa versa. Some large national contract central stations only support one method of reaching you (like email). You need someone that can call, fax, text message, page, send smoke signals etc. when a customer needs to reach you. Secondly if you use DMP or BOSCH, for example, those send special formats that some central stations don't FULLY support. Make certain the central station you select FULLY support the gear you use and plans to continue to support it. Thirdly make certain you have all the technology you wish to provide to your customers supported by the central station. If you want to sell remote guard tours or two way audio and send it via the Internet and they don't support it, you need to keep looking. Fourthly always have at least one plan "B" option with another good quality central station. If you plan this from the beginning it will be easier. Make sure that you have your own number(s) for the panels you program; one(s) that only you control to call forward and/or redirect. That way you know you're always able to change quickly to a new central station with minimum effort should a disaster occur or business conditions change.

That's

.......... :-))

snipped-for-privacy@wies.net inspired greatness with:

Interesting. Does your company have a TX license?

Allan Waghalter inspired greatness with:

About 30 miles north of you :-). Which one do you use Allan?

Roland Moore inspired greatness with:

Good points. Thanks Roland.

Nick Markowitz Jr. inspired greatness with:

Thanks for the recommendation Nick.

Russell Brill inspired greatness with:

Ahh yes.. that works better. :-)

I personally use Tutor Security. They are UL listed and small by national standards. They can handle all formats and do a great job. They don't do two way voice, however.

I also use Counter Force USA likewise located in Houston. They include long range radio and two way voice.

I am very impressed with Dispatch Center and United Central Control in San Antonio.

Tutor:

dispatch center: UCC:

You should also come to our HGCAA (Houston Gulf Coast Alarm Assn). We meet the 2nd Friday of each month. Always have an interesting program. Check out our web site at

Give me a legitimate e-mail address and I will get you on the announcement distribution list.

oops, I guess I can't type today.

Ron--

Yes and No.

We have a fire alarm license but we were exempted from the burglar alarm license requirements because we are a coop.

We don't monitor alarms for end users and we don't buy accounts. We only monitor for licensed alarm companies and each company we monitor for is an owner of Monitoring America. For thse reasons, some states, counties and cities don't require us to be licensed.

Ron Wies General Manager Monitoring America Alarm Co-Op

First off get your own toll free line(s). Then you aren't stuck with a programming nightmare down the road if you don't like how things work with a CS. Inter-Tel is a pretty good company for this.

Arizona Security Controls is about as good as it gets for price and service. Their are a couple cheaper stations, but you get what you pay for. There are also a lot of more expensive stations that just don't deliver like Az Security does. Joe Lucia is in charge of their automation and programming and he is really responsive to ideas for future functionality.

They have one of the best on-line dealer interfaces I have seen (E24's sucks by comparison) and lots of options for handling reports. Account history is available on-line for atleast 6 months, and you can generate reports for download and printout locally so you can include them with your billing, or you can have them mail your reports for a pretty reasonable fee. On- line customer interface is available and semi customizable by individual account or by a block of accounts for multiple site customers.

Its pretty darned cool stuff. When we complained about all the IP services coming about and people messing up or getting rid of POTS lines in their homes Joe started working on an IP reporting module that will plug in and work with just about any alarm panel. We/They are beta testing now. Its a pretty impressive company.

(Is that better Frank)

-- Sincerly, The guy who makes the final decision on who we buy from. Bob La Londe

The Security Consultant Bob La Londe - Owner P.O. Box 5720 Yuma, Az 85366

(928) 782-9765 ofc (928) 782-7873 fax

Licensed Contractor ROC103044 & ROC103047

I like it better when you bitch and whine. Where's my check? :-)

I'm not sure that would work. Don't get me wrong, our company does this, too. But I'm not thinking it's that great a solution. Think about: you have say 500 accounts, with account numbers from 3500-4000. If you switch monitoring companies, what are the odds they will give you the exact same block for your accounts? It might be easy (I don't know how easy, it's just my speculation). But if not, you'd still end up having to reprogram all your accounts. Just my $0.02 :)

Most decent CSs have multiple line blocks. The odds are they would have it available on one of them. Its pretty straight forward.

Hey Joe, How many line blocks do you guys have?

Your pers singal costs should be much lower as well as yur base rate for monitoring. I save a forutne on my OC accounts alone. If you can stand discount service from one of the discount CSs you can save even more.

We have up to xx line codes not sure how many exactly but they are 2 digit hex. so taking on someones accounts would not be a problem even if they did overlap.

James