If Leuck isn't feigning ignorance for Monitronic's sake and Leuck sincerely doesn't know (and still wants too), Leuck can email me. On the other hand, if Leuck wants to secure a legal release for me from Monitronics for any liability for tossing Monitronics filthy laundry out in this NG, I'll be glad to post it all here. I know the customers involved on the other end would have no issues with that, however I suspect Monitronics truly might.
It's not a matter of how many receivers they have. The issue (for them) is how many accounts they can cram onto any given line, line card or receiver. With daily test and open/close signals they need more lines, more line cards and more receivers for the same number of accounts. On a per account basis the cost is small but with tens of thousands of accounts the added cost is significant. Most central stations would rather maximize profits than optimize service so they don't do it. I asked if you do it for all accounts and you (as usual) dodged the question. That simply confirms what we already knew -- your employer is a typical (cheap) central station.
Nor do you but see the above paragraph.
The issue here is that neither the central station nor the installer set the system up properly and provided an appropriate level of service to detect this common type of problem before it turned into a false dispatch. Typically, you tried to blame some imaginary DIYer rather than admit you're part of the problem.
We know that nothing was done to prevent a false dispatch.
That's irrlevent. No matter which format is used, Caller ID and daily test signals, properly processed, could have prevented the problem. This clearly was not done since the CS apparently has no knowledge of where the signal originated.
We know that they didn't head this situation off. We also know that, properly configured using existing technology, this problem would have been avoided. It wasn't. Ergo, they did it wrong.
I know that this sort of problem is all too common, yet it can be avoided most of the time. Unfortunately, people like you and companies like Monitronics won't spend the extra dollars to solve the problems. For your employer it's all about maximizing gain on RMR. For you it makes no difference at all. You're content to take your weekly paycheck and contribute nothing of value.
You keep saying that as thouogh you actually believe it.
after the dispatch
Wrong again. The error was when some fat fingered "professional" alarm installer programmed some other system to the OP's account number. Had he tested the system upon completion of programming and had the CS checked Caller ID they would have known right away there was an error. The professional alarm installer and the central station clearly failed to prevent a very preventable problem.
I explained hoe the proper use of daily test, open/close signals and Caller ID can avert these problems most of the time. That's not changing the subject. It's finding a solution to the problem. You're not interested in solving the problem -- only defending those who, like you, did nothing to prevent it.
FYI, while I offered monitoring service, I always insisted that each system be fully tested through to the CS upon completion. The first signal was *always* a test signal which could not be mistaken for an alarm. Once that was done and the data was confirmed by the CS, we would proceed to test the zones, generating alarm, trouble and, where appropriate, restoral signals. That is the best way to prevent this sort of problem. We did it the same way for DIY as for professionally installed systems. It takes a few extra minutes to do it right but it saves a lot of false dispatches.
I told you that is up to the dealer, our receivers would have no problems if EVERY account we have sent daily tests and O/C reports, what you have no clue about is that 800 costs are insignifigant compared to other expenses, I've NEVER heard anyone bitch about the cost of phone service, and since you've never seen our central stations and you don't have a clue what receivers we have you really can't say we are cheap.
As far as the OP's station goes again you know nothing about them and yet you try deflecting the story by harping on O/C reports and daily test signals
The above paragraph is meaningless when you don't even know who monitored him
I don't recall dispatching on the OP's system, perhaps if you keep repeating it you will soon believe I really did
No we don't know that
No we don't know that either
Wrong
You have no clue what I do or how Monitronics does business
What *you* have no clue about (among numerous other things) is that 800 number costs are not the issue. Without daily test or O/C reports a single line can typically handle about 700 accounts. The optimum methdo, of course, is to provide two sets of two lines in hunting. The first receiver gets the first call. If it's busy the call rolls over to a second line. This is not to be confused with the 2nd phone number programmed in the panel. If both lines on the first receiver are busy or if something fails, the panel dials the 2nd receiver. This is also a 2-line hunting group.
The above goes beyond UL minima but that is what UL requirements are -- minima. Done right, you exceed them.
For a small central station, having 4 lines in 2 hunting groups for just ~1,000 accounts is no big deal. In our case, almost all of our clients were local so we didn't use 800 numbers.
Monitronics claims to have nearly 500,000 monitored accounts. If they follow minima, they have over 700 receiver phone numbers (lines). If they did daily test or O/C on all accounts they would need at least doubly that. They would also need twice as many resceivers, line cards, etc. Monitronics would need larger facilities with more backup power to accomodate the additional hardware.
Of course not. By doing the bare minimum they keep their overhead low and maximize profits. They have nothing to jiminex about.
We know that in order to do it right you would need to invest in lots more hardware, not to mention trebling your telco line charges and quadruping (at least) your 800 number costs.
Nonsense. I explained how using those features could have avoided the false dispatch. You chose to pretend you don't understand whay I mean rather than *ever* admit error.
I never said that you dispatched ojn this system. I said that by refusing to spend the extra money and do the extra work to prevent this sort of needless false dispatch your company (and you with them) are part of the problem. This isn't an isolated, once-in-a-true-tale-from-Olson rarity. It is a recurrent problem.
You don't know. Everyone capable of thought does.
It happened.
I could care less what you do there. I know a good deal about your employer and most of it isn't good.
Every company can screw up. Bigger companies tend to threaten and bluster their way through problems, especially when they're in the wrong, mostly because they can. That said, I don't have 25K in legal fees I want to throw down a rat hole just to spar and prove a point that is already proven, (because the check was in the mail so to speak). What little cryptic information I gave Leuck is more than enough for an insider to find out what went down at Monitronics, even from a former insider. If he bothers to take a sniff, I doubt he'll make any more noise about it, especially here on this NG, it really stinks. If he finds out through official channels, I am sure he'll be told to officially shut the hell up about it.
too), Leuck can email me. On the other hand, if Leuck
liability for tossing Monitronics filthy laundry out in this NG,
other end would have no issues with that, however I suspect
Monitronics has never told me to shut up about things posted here and never will, I seriously doubt anyone there other than me even knows this newsgroup exists. If you want to put up this bogus canard about 25k in legal fees for a lawsuit that isn't going to happen thats fine but so far you haven't given any information I remotely understand cryptic or not which is leading me to believe you are full of shit
Either put up or shut up, I have a feeling I know which you'll choose
I heard some pretty pathetic things about Just Looking but well even tho I'll mention THAT in this newsgroup I won't tell you exactly what the pathetic things really are because I might get sued...yea thats it
Right thats the cheap approach you keep hapring about, 4 receivers and 4 lines for 1,000 accounts
No well over 600,000
That would only be the case if we went by your limited experience with central station receivers, I don't know what you used but my guess might be SurGard MLR-2's which is a good basic 2-line receiver but still old technology.
We have several inbound T-1's feeding 4 SurGard MLR-2000's with an additional 4 MLR-2000's as backup in the same building as well as 4 more running in a remote backup site. EACH MLR-2000 is capable of handling between 750,000 to 900,000 accounts with a full 80 line cards available with each handling well over 1,000 line designations, they had no problems handling the massive amount of traffic that comes in during hurricane season and they'll handle any other disaster that may come along. Power-wise they use less than the typical stacks of MLR-2's or Silent Knights that people often see at other central stations which throws your "need more backup power" out the window. BTW I doubt you've even seen a picture of our building much less know how it's powered.
They don't use fixed line designations like the old receivers so you don't need the same amount of phone lines you would with a standard receiver, you might want to read up on how they work. We also have several ITI CS-5000's, Radionics 6600's, Ademco MX-8000's and Honeywell 7810IR Internet receivers.
Well lets see who's being cheap, someone who ran a central station from his bedroom or a company who has several fully redundent MLR-2000's at 2 sites?
Okay. If I am a story teller, I want to tell a story. Suppose there a company that has an employee that has a last name that sounds like say LIKE for example. This is not a real company mind you. Suppose that company through its infinite wisdom and at the same time infinite departmental compartmentalization has made a blunder that has somehow turned into a policy. Suppose that policy is to do something really stupid, but it is a policy. And everyone knows no one can question policy in any big mother ship company. Perhaps that policy is related to a certain line of proprietary panels the mother ship company uses. In real life these panels don't actually exist, nor does the policy, or the company for that matter. Suppose if you are a dealer of this panel you can't program it locally or remotely, only the big mother ship can do that. Well suppose you're sick of that, as well as being sick of the big mother ship company and want to be able to program the panels at least locally yourself. Perhaps you want to change monitoring facilities away from the big mother ship as well someday, but only someday in the future. So the big mother ship calls the panels and puts in a code that allows you to access and program the panels locally. You still can't call the panels up since they are locked up for the mother ship only to remotely program. Well that is great, the big mother ship calls up all, yes every single one of your panels and puts in a code that allows you, the local dealer that owns the accounts, to program the panels locally. What a concept, a dealer that can actually program his own panels. So what is the problem here? The dealer can program his own panels and the big mother ship continues to monitor the accounts and bill for it and everyone is happy, right? (At this point I like to think that LIKE is reaching for the Rolaids because he just may know of this policy, and if he really doesn't yet know the story, he knows a train wreck is very near at hand). The policy? Yes the policy. What might that be? Well when the mother ship tells you the code to get into the panels, perhaps the default factory code for example, and even if it keeps billings you for monitoring the panels, the policy says to remove the account number and the central station receiver number from each and every panel they put a code in that the local dealer can access. Wait a minute, that is all of the accounts, yet the mother ship still bills you for monitoring all of the accounts? Oh but they don't tell you any of that, they bill you and say your accounts are fine and being monitored like before. Many dealers here wouldn't understand how a panel can be monitored without an account number or a central station receiver number programmed in the panel. But they like don't understand LIKE. If the dealer doesn't find all this out on his own, the mother ship waits until say someone gets broken into, perhaps suffers a loss, and then the mother ship pays restitution to the end user and hush money to the dealer. Perhaps that is policy too? Of course LIKE can say it never happened. But as they say now you know the rest of the story, that never happened. Some big companies pay money to folks to make sure stories like this one that never happened never get told to anyone. I wonder if like LIKE anyone can explain that policy? I guess it's something like policy stinks sometimes, and stinks a lot coming out of a big inept lying corporate ass. It sure is funny how there are some corporate checks I have had my hands on recently, with names that sound an awful lot like names in a police report I have had my hands on recently as well. Maybe I should post pictures of them all together somewhere the next time I get accused of being a story teller. Maybe then someone could connect the dots. Just maybe.
"Mark Leuck" wrote in message news:46c6435e$0$11001$ snipped-for-privacy@roadrunner.com...
OK, let's make sure we're all clear on this. You say that Monitronics disabled monitoring on all of the dealer's accounts and didn't even notify the dealer or the customers? Monitronics continued to charge the dealer for monitoring the alarms even though they were no longer being monitored?
And do I also understand clearly that Monitronics has a policy of locking out not only the end user but even the installing dealer from programming the accounts?
Come to think of it, isn't Leuck the one who says most systems are not locked out like this? Talk about dishonesty. This Leuck guy is worse than Olson.
Your measure of honesty is suspect. However, if what Roland has told us, the issue is much bigger than you've even stated. In Canada, such actions would be considered criminal fraud.
Feel free to connect the dots anyway you like. I won't confirm or deny your connections. I don't feel like walking in Jim Rojas' shoes with the Brinks monster. Being right or reasonable isn't going to save the wallet from the legal cashectomy resulting from telling the truth. I have been to Federal Court. The only attorneys I feel comfortable going with back in that dangerous place have a 25K minimum retainer fee. I have not identified anyone or any company specifically here. However some company might take particular exception and start taking the legal bluster route. I don't believe that would serve anyone's interests. It might be interesting to see if there are any other posts saying it ain't so. I doubt there will be, but if there are maybe then some FedEx tracking numbers would come in handy? If not, I still have the names, dates, times, places and faces. I don't have an agenda to try and besmirch any person or company. However what happened did happen. Trying to pretend I am full of it isn't going to help anyone truly trying to address a problem like this. No one should rejoice at any of this. It is bad for everyone involved and for the industry as a whole. People are counting on us. When things break down like this I believe it is a message that everyone should take more into account and recheck everything to be certain nothing in their own house is in out of order. This is a details business. It means testing, and checking, and second guessing yourself and everyone else up and down the line, as often as you can. I learned a lesson here not to allow anyone else to fat finger a panel that you are ultimately responsible for, especially when you cannot quickly verify what was done or not done.
"Robert L Bass" wrote in message news:sNDxi.174$ni6.88@trnddc03...
I don't blame you at all. Jim Rojas' situation is somewhat different though. While he is morally and ethically in the right, legally he's in the wrong. He has also pretty much sunk his own boat by mishandling the matter. That's a real shame since he's a nice guy and doesn't deserve what they are doing to him.
The issue with Monitronics isn't so cut and dry. If what you say is trye (and I don't doubt you for a minute) they would be in a far less advantageous position suing you for posting. Even if it were a complete lie like the accusations of Mugford, Olson and company, it's an expensive and difficult process trying to sue for libel over a Usenet post. Were it not so I'd have taken Mugford down years ago when he started his crap. Olson is a harder target since he's not on US soil. Sabodish would have been easy to sue but he had no assets other than a dilapidated house in a crappy town.
If you speak the truth about Monitronics' misdeeds and have hard evidence to back it up they're not likely to fight you over it. Those are the kind of lawsuits that bring major damages and punitive awards to someone like you if you can show that their suit was intended to stop you from speaking the truth.
True, but we know it's Monitronics anyway. It figures someone like Leuck would find a home there.
That's similar to what I've been saying about doing daily tests and checking Caller ID. It is indicative of the common mindset unfortunately that some people react by defending the status quo rather than trying to do anything to make things better. C'est la merde.
as often as
It is for those of us who actually care about quality and things like protecting clients. For some it's just a numbers racket -- trying to sign as many customers as possible in the shortest amount of time and with the least investment in labor and materials. That is why you'll always see people like Leuck arguing against anything that costs an extra few pennies per account per month instead of promoting better practices.
you cannot quickly
My situation is different from yours since I cater to DIYers. I teach them how to program their own panels, explain what the various features are for and how to implement them. On Napco panels I literally walk them through the programming, screen-by-screen. As best I can tell, I'm the only online vendor who does that as a standard practice.
As to monitoring, there are more differences. Most DIYers don't want monitoring at all or want to DIY that as well. This is their choice. I give them the names of several reliable central station firms that are willing to work with DIYers and encourage them to contact one. Whichever way they choose to handle it, I still walk them through the setup and testing of the system.
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.