Ensuring the security of your building or organization by choosing an alarm company can be a daunting task, especially with the variety of service offerings and providers.  At the end of the day, the best advice is to do your homework and remember if it sounds too good to be true – it probably is.

Alarm Panel

What to Know When Looking at Alarm Companies

Here are 5 key questions to ask any companies that you may be seriously considering when looking for alarm services:

1.   Who owns the equipment?

  • Many companies provide a lease and purchase option. It is always good to be clear on the ownership of the system.

2.   Who installs the system?

  • Often the system is installed by a sub-contractor or agents and in some cases they may not be the ones that service or warranty the system.

3.   Who provides the monitoring service?

  • This is a complicated question, as many companies no longer offer local monitoring services, rather they provide wholesale monitoring from large call centre locations. Often, these are provided out of province or even out of country. It is also important to ensure all of the alarm signals are logged at the monitoring station. Arming, disarming, trouble, tampering and restoring alarms are all vital to the monitoring.

4.   Will the monitoring be provided by an Underwriters’ Laboratories of Canada (ULC) monitoring facility?

5.   Will there be a familiarization period?

  • This is a good process to ensure everyone using the system is familiar with the operation and procedures.

Anything Less Should Alarm You

Making sure to ask the right questions helps ensure that you aren’t just infatuated with your first option, and that you make the right decision when selecting an alarm company.

The 5 questions we posed above should help vet out less qualified companies, and stay tuned to our blog as we continue to provide expert knowledge on what to look for in your security providers.

Thanks for reading,

The FCi Team