Fair warning dear reader, this will be a two-part post about an ongoing sage I am having with my alarm monitoring company. It may be worth your time though, since the lessons I learned through this saga could help you. If nothing else, I have some tips that can save you time and hassle when dealing with alarm monitoring companies. In the words of Dave Ramsey, I’ve paid the “stupid tax” on this already, hopefully you will learn from me and avoid paying it.

To start with, I purchased my home security system back in 2011 which was about two years after I purchased my home. I decided to go with a large, national company that offered cellular connectivity and smartphone integration. They also offered nice extras like water sensors and integrated smoke/CO2 detectors. I thought I was getting a nice system, but I made the mistake of adding the cost of the system into my alarm monitoring agreement. In other words, I financed a depreciating asset over five years instead of biting the bullet and paying for the entire system up-front. Well, that wouldn’t be the last mistake I made.

Once I got the system installed though, I added an additional layer to my home’s defenses. This lowered my homeowner’s insurance and gave me greater peace of mind, both of which are worth something. I look at home alarm systems like insurance policies, you pay for them hoping that you will never need them. Ten years earlier, my house in Chandler got robbed when I was out of town…and I didn’t have a home alarm system installed at the time. That is an experience I never wanted to go through again, so I got one installed at my Mesa home.

For most of the next five years, the system worked fairly well. There were a few issues with the water sensors though, I had one replaced and had to reset them a couple of times. Apparently, this is not out of the ordinary and the reason why not all alarm monitoring companies include them in their service. The smart phone integration worked fine though, which was one feature I really appreciated and used. However, there were a few problems looming that came to the fore around the five year mark.

The biggest change was my alarm monitoring contract got sold just before it was supposed to be renewed. From what I have read, this is fairly common since the revenue for home alarms isn’t in the hardware, it’s in the service agreements. I found this out after the fact when I received a letter from the new alarm monitoring company that I was now one of their customers. Imagine my surprise when this happened, but nothing changed except the payment address. This is when things began to go downhill fast and I learned more than I ever wanted to about the alarm monitoring business.

But there were some other problems that needed addressing first. Well three actually, two faulty water sensors and a door sensor that were failing. This was bothersome because they would send notifications to the alarm panel at inopportune times, like in the middle of the night. I called the alarm monitoring company to troubleshoot the problem multiple times, eventually I just had them disable the sensors because the bypass commands never seemed to stick. This wasn’t a deal-breaker because I was thinking of getting new water sensors anyway, plus I had begun thinking about making a switch to another provider.

I had been with my original alarm company for almost five year before my monitoring contract got sold. I was paying the same rate as I was back in 2011, but by now the panel was fully paid-off and the market rate for cellular-connected systems had dropped considerably. My goal was to drop my bill by 30-50%, which would have put me around $25/month with paid-off equipment. I was ok with this because as long as it was working, I didn’t need the latest (and most expensive) system out there. You would think that a reasonable price break for a long-term customer would have been easy to negotiate…but you would be wrong.

When I called the (new) alarm monitoring company to negotiate a better deal, things started off badly. When I asked about a rate reduction, they offered $5 off for the next six months then a return back to the normal rate. They seemed nonplussed when I stated what other companies were offering for the same service, which was 30-50% than what I was being charged. When I finally stated that I was considering leaving, I was told that I signed an extension in March and couldn’t get out of my contact right now. Needless to say, I was becoming frustrated with how this new relationship was devolving and decided to consider what to do next.

In Part II, I’ll describe how this situation got resolved and what my recommendations are for not repeating my mistakes.