I know that I am in the minority on this but even after several users here have strongly advised me to get a central monitoring service I still choose to monitor my system myself through email, text message and pots.
What prompted me to post this just now is that my wife went walking this morning on a nearby walking path. When she was there a man fell on his bicycle and apparently broke his arm and may have had other unknown injury. She dialed 911 and waited with him along with a couple of medical pros who were luckily there to help. Twenty five minutes later a policeman arrived but still no medical help so they were still sitting and waiting when she decided to go on her way. This was a medical emergency and you can die waiting for help in the existing system. How fast should I expect a response to my home alarm?
My reasoning in my decision to self monitor is that by the time a monitoring system gets alerted, calls me to confirm the alarm, calls the police, and the police dispatch and get to my house. all that they will be able to do is to confirm that there has been a break-in. "Yep looks like the door was bashed in". My thinking is to have the alarm make a racket, turn on lights and scare the thief and cause them to want to get out of there quickly so that they just grab a few things and run. If I can accomplish that much I feel that the system has done all that it can do. If it fails in doing that then the thieves will get what they want and be long gone before the police arrive whether I have a monitoring service or not.
So I would like to hear from the non-professionals here on their opinion and whether they use a service or not. I'd also like to hear from the pro installers with a good argument to convince me that I'm wrong.
Mike.
What prompted me to post this just now is that my wife went walking this morning on a nearby walking path. When she was there a man fell on his bicycle and apparently broke his arm and may have had other unknown injury. She dialed 911 and waited with him along with a couple of medical pros who were luckily there to help. Twenty five minutes later a policeman arrived but still no medical help so they were still sitting and waiting when she decided to go on her way. This was a medical emergency and you can die waiting for help in the existing system. How fast should I expect a response to my home alarm?
My reasoning in my decision to self monitor is that by the time a monitoring system gets alerted, calls me to confirm the alarm, calls the police, and the police dispatch and get to my house. all that they will be able to do is to confirm that there has been a break-in. "Yep looks like the door was bashed in". My thinking is to have the alarm make a racket, turn on lights and scare the thief and cause them to want to get out of there quickly so that they just grab a few things and run. If I can accomplish that much I feel that the system has done all that it can do. If it fails in doing that then the thieves will get what they want and be long gone before the police arrive whether I have a monitoring service or not.
So I would like to hear from the non-professionals here on their opinion and whether they use a service or not. I'd also like to hear from the pro installers with a good argument to convince me that I'm wrong.
Mike.