home alarm at 5:30 am!

[Dan20703]

Got blasted awake by my home alarm going off at 5:30 am this morning. Grabbed the bedside handgun and cracked open my bedroom door to see what would be there. Then I noticed my dog was not barking and just laying at the top of the stairs looking at me. She will bark if any sound comes from a door or window. I shut down the alarm and listened. Still no sound. Now I'm waiting for the alarm service to make their usual call to check. Nothing. I go downstairs with the dog and make a quick scan. Nothing amiss. Reset alarm and get back into bed. Wife is wondering why no call came and I am mad about that fact they didn't call.

All of a sudden the dog is on full alert barking! Jump up again and peak out to see her looking at the front door. Police are here for the alarm. I step out, show some ID and tell them what occured. They check the perimeter and see nothing touched on doors or windows. It was good to see they responded and it was under 10 minutes.

Had the system checked today and one of my glass breaking sensors died and set off the system.

I didn't need any coffee this morning to wake me up.

[grad_Student]

Ever call the Alarm company?

[03Lightningrocks]

I get charged a fee by the Police Department after two false alarms. I think it is two... might be three but either way I would be bothered by my alarm company not calling me first. Who monitors your alarm?

[Piney]

Our profile with our alarm company has:
Call the house first. If no answer, call appropriate department (fire , med, LEO), then call my cell.

We had an incident at another house where someone broke and opened a window. By the time the company called the house with no answer, called my cell to tell me , and called it in to the SO, 12 min had passed. We changed the calling profile.

I figured if no one is at home, no need to wait as we cant look into it anyway.

The only false alarms we've had were related to batteries going bad in a remote sensor in the workshop. It sounded the alarm, got the neoghbors fired up, but the alarm company's code showed bad sensor and not an event.

[03Lightningrocks]

Our profile with our alarm company has:
Call the house first. If no answer, call appropriate department (fire , med, LEO), then call my cell.

We had an incident at another house where someone broke and opened a window. By the time the company called the house with no answer, called my cell to tell me , and called it in to the SO, 12 min had passed. We changed the calling profile.

I figured if no one is at home, no need to wait as we cant look into it anyway.

The only false alarms we've had were related to batteries going bad in a remote sensor in the workshop. It sounded the alarm, got the neoghbors fired up, but the alarm company's code showed bad sensor and not an event.

I have wondered about this very issue before. By the time my monitoring company calls my home phone, then calls me... then finally calls the police. Enough time has passed that the burglars may already be gone. Hopefully the noise from the alarm will make them nervous enough that they don't hang around very long.

It would be nice to have the police notified first but false alarm calls beyond the allotted calls, get tagged with a 50 dollar fee and eventually the police may not take your alarm seriously.

[TexasGal]

Sounds like the dog is a better alarm system

[surprise_i'm_armed]

Has anyone noticed on the Broadview (formerly Brinks) security
ads that the alarm company calls within seconds of the crazy ex
bursting through the front door?

Granted it's only a 30 or 60 second ad, but I bet in real life you
would probably find the night shift security staff snoozing in
their chairs, or bickering about whether the alarm was real,
or just another bad sensor.

SIA

[boomerang]

Sounds like the dog is a better alarm system

Until you go on a week long vacation.

[jimlongley]

As a retired telephone man, one of the things we used to dislike greatly was the alarm systems that would go into conniptions when the phone line failed. Not something that occurs often, but just often enough. We would get a call from the PD, or more often the sheriffs out in the county, that an alarm had been going off for two days and the alarm company couldn't contact the customer.

One time the alarm company had installed a speaker on a pole near the house (which was a violation of right of way, the pole belonged to the power and phone companies, not the customer) so I climbed up and removed it, and the wiring to it, and then the sheriff silenced the speaker on the garage (not my job, man!) and I disconnected the phone line at the pole because the problem was inside and the auto dialer was dialing the alarm company, the sheriff, and their backup keyholder every few minutes.

The people were a little miffed when they returned from their vacation and found out that their house had been without an alarm for almost a week.

They had a cat which they had left a food bin open for, and the cat had (apparantly) knocked one of the phones off the hook. Modern telephone central offices will sense a trouble on the line and disconnect it to: a) run tests; and b) prevent the line from tying up resources in the switch, and that disconnect triggered the alarm system's tamper guard, which then started to attempt to use the telephone line that it detected tampering on to call for help. The switch, seeing no trouble on the line, restored it, and the alarm system began merrily calling for help until it was reset.

The backup keyholder, just by coincidence, had decided to go away that weekend also, so for the two days that the system was being a problem, nobody was at their house to answer the call, and by the time they got home, we had disconnected the phone line.

The Sheriff's Office charged the customer for several visits, the phone company charged the customer for the disconnect and reconnect, and the alarm company was ticketed for putting the speaker on the pole.

[MojoTexas]

Before I got married, I dated a gal for a while that was a 911 dispatcher. I got to sit and listen in to 911 calls with her one Friday night, and I would estimate that roughly 25% of the calls she got were false alarms for security systems. She says that very rarely are they "real" situations, although protocol dictates that they send someone to investigate.

[Teamless]

My wife worked (for about 3-4 weeks) for an alarm dispatch company. they would field calls from all over the US and Canada. She said that false alarms were very common, and that in a lot of cities, if you have more than 2 false alarms over a certain period (Sorry, I forget how long) that your alarm permit could be revoked by the city you were in.

[Dan20703]

Ever call the Alarm company?

Yes I called them and they claimed to have tried calling me when the alarm went off but they didn't get a response and notified the police.

[couzin]

When we built a new house in 1998 we had an alarm installed and had Smith Alarms monitoring it. The technition had come out, did all the programming, checked it out, said you're all set, and was gone. Over the next two years we set it off accidentally about three times but never got the phone call from Smith. One day i decided to do a system check as recommended by Smith. Called Smith, told em I was going to set it off, and proceeded to let it rip for a good 5 minutes. Turned it off - never got a call. Called Smith - they got no signal on their end. Ended up that the system, even being paid for (some 29 months at $26.00 each mo), was never connected to Smith's monitoring center. Smith said - too bad, cost of monitoring even though no connection, and besides, I never had a break in so the system did some good. When I threatened legal action to recover costs, the system was fixed and we got 3 years free monitoring service. About as angry as I have ever been.

[srothstein]

I would have to say that probably close to 99% of the alarm calls I got while on patrol were false alarms. But, by the same token, I have also lost count of the number of burglars I arrested after getting an alarm call. Of course, we soon got to know which companies usually had good alarms and which we should never trust. we also got to know which houses and businesses (it is both) had unreliable alarms regardless of the company. And we would go a little slower to the regular false alarms than to ones that were regularly good. Unknown new ones would fall somewhere in the middle, depending on the individual officer's thoughts on the subject.

If I ever get an alarm system, I will use the best company I can, then I will rig it to be as loud as possible in the house and immediate area. Think tornado wanring system loud to get an idea of what I want. And I would always tell the alarm company to call the police first thing, then try to call me. I want the police on the way and we can cancel them if we find it is alright. And if I had to pay a fine for the false alarm or the noise during a real one, it would be worth it to me.

On a separate note about the fines, cities and cops hate making all the false alarm calls. Many cities have instituted alarm permit systems and fines for false alarms or excessive false alarms. I think this is so wrong as to be criminal in and of itself. I paid for all of the police protection I should need when I paid my city taxes. I put taking reports over the phone or not investigating property damage only accidents into the same category as alarm fines. The PD is not doing their job because the city is spending too much money elsewhere.

[ELB]

I would note that just because an alarm goes off and no burgler is found does not mean it is "false." Cat knocks the phone off the hook, yes. Alarm goes off, no cause found...maybe the cause just hotfooted it down the street.

Dog is still the better alarm. As long as you have a dog that barks at strangers. Mine thinks any human that comes to the house has come to pet him...