Is a Security System Right For You?

Roughly one in fifty homes in the United States is broken into each year. Any single year the odds look low, but they accumulate, and the financial, practical and emotional cost of a burglary is high enough that it is worth doing something about.

Here is the part most alarm companies leave out. A monitored system genuinely reduces your chances of being burgled, but it is not free, some systems are fiddly enough that people stop arming them, and a badly set up system generates false alarms that waste police and fire time. Before you spend anything with us or anyone else, there are cheaper measures worth taking first.

Do these before you buy a system

Most burglars get in the simple way: through an unlocked door or window, or by pushing and kicking a locked one until it gives. Good deadbolts on every door and secure catches on accessible windows will improve your security more than most people expect.

• Ask your police department for a security audit. Most will do one, and they will spot weak points you have stopped noticing.
• Mark your valuables: engrave an ID number and put the decal in the window.
• Keep valuables out of sight from the front door and from the street.
• Get to know your neighbors. Sharing who is away and when is genuinely effective.
• Make the house look occupied. Lights and a radio help; when you travel, make sure mail and parcels are not piling up.
• Keep the landscaping down. Doors and windows screened by bushes, trees or a garage are the ones that get chosen.
• Keep track of your keys.

If you do want a system

Then it needs to be installed and monitored properly, because the equipment is only half of it. Consumer research has found dramatic differences between firms on whether the work was actually done right. Some were rated “superior” by over 90% of surveyed customers, others by fewer than half.

Get more than one quote. It lets you compare what is actually being recommended and gauge how well each firm knows its subject, and the price spread is not small: mystery shoppers pricing the same specified installation with three years of monitoring found quotes ranging from about $1,800 to over $4,400. Monitoring alone ranged from roughly $1,000 to $1,700 over three years.

Questions worth asking

• Check who owns the equipment. Some installers keep ownership of what is on your walls. Prefer a company that sells you a system you own.
• Ask for your programming codes. Some firms make moving your monitoring elsewhere deliberately difficult.
• Ask what happens to the price later, not just what it is today.
• Hold back part of the payment, ideally half, until the system has been running properly for a few weeks.

Finally, tell your home insurer once it is in. Discounts for a centrally monitored system average around 5%.

Where we stand

We are an alarm company, so take this as you find it: we would rather you did the free things first and then bought the right system than bought the biggest one going. And the equipment is yours.

Advice in this article draws on consumer research published by Bay Area Consumers’ Checkbook and reported by SFGate.