Joe Sanchez has had an alarm system in his Corona del Mar, Calif., home for nearly two decades. But one day, when he returned from a business trip, he saw what everybody dreads: The door to his house was ajar.
He cautiously went inside; no one was there. He then called his security company and discovered that the police were never called. “No one would explain why,” says Sanchez, a high-tech consultant. “What if I had come home and found a burglar in the living room?”
Homeowners are increasingly putting in alarm systems, but they may be buying a false sense of security. Law-enforcement agencies in several communities say they’ve seen an increase in problems with home-alarm units. Some alarms don’t go off when they should — or, more commonly, go off when they shouldn’t. Indeed, the International Association of Chiefs of Police estimates that 95 to 98 percent of all home-alarm calls are false, costing police departments nationwide about $600 million a year.
The recent wave of mergers and acquisitions in the industry is making problems worse, some contend. As companies consolidate, they may lose customers’ passwords when transferring databases, or even miss signals sent by incompatible equipment, says Norma Beaubien, president of the False Alarm Reduction Association, a group of law-enforcement officials. “A lot of times, customers don’t even get a letter telling them that their account has been sold,” she says.
Although nothing was taken from his home, Sanchez wrote several letters to his alarm company, SecurityLink Inc., complaining about the 1998 incident. He eventually received an apology and an offer of three months’ free service. (He declined, and switched to another service.)
Hank Monaco, vice president of marketing for SecurityLink, a subsidiary of San Antonio-based SBC Communications, Inc., calls Sanchez’s experience an “isolated incident,” saying he doesn’t know what caused it, or how often such oversights happen within the company. SecurityLink has acquired four alarm companies within the past two years, but still strives to deliver “intensely personal service,” he says.
Although burglary rates are dropping — they’re now only half what they were in the mid-’80s — sales of home-alarm systems are rising. About 16.2 million homes had professionally installed security systems in 1999, up 11 percent from the previous year, according to SA Resources, a Chestnut Hill, Mass., research firm.
But gripes about security systems are growing, too: The Better Business Bureau reports that in 1998, the latest year for which figures are available, complaints about alarm and monitoring companies rose 9 percent to 1,375 nationwide. Howard Levinson, a Boston consultant who inspects security systems for companies and individuals, says that, in general, he’s unimpressed with what he has seen: spotty monitoring, refurbished parts and inept installation of alarms, including motion detectors installed behind furniture or upside down. His advice: “If you have nice stuff and want to discourage burglars, it’s better to buy a set of blinds and keep them closed.”
Local law-enforcement agencies are also fielding complaints. Shanna Werner, who heads the alarm unit for the Salt Lake City police, says she encounters problems frequently. Among them: a company that sold a unit to an elderly blind woman who frequently set off the “panic” button when she meant to turn on her system, and incurred heavy fines; a salesman who told a homeowner his young daughters could “disappear” if he didn’t buy a security system; and a company that continued to charge monitoring fees to a homeowner after he had sold his house — and then charged the same fees to the buyer, too. “As far as I’m concerned, this whole alarm business is a scam,” Werner says.
To stem the tide of false alarms, police are trying everything from imposing fines — about 2,000 communities, and a few states, now make homeowners pay for accidental calls — to remedial education. “Alarm salesmen sell their systems using scare tactics,” says Debbie Langford, alarm coordinator for the Mesa, Ariz., police department. “Then they give such a quick explanation of their products, people don’t even know what’s in their homes.” Mesa police hold classes every six weeks for sheepish homeowners who can’t figure out how to arm their systems or keep Fluffy from triggering the motion detector. Graduates are given a $50 waiver on fines. “Usually, the sessions are packed,” Langford says.
Home-security companies don’t dispute that most alarms are false. But they blame consumer error. When properly used, home-security systems are an effective deterrent to break-ins and give buyers “peace of mind,” says Kara Rupard, spokeswoman for the National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association, of Silver Spring, Md. While there’s “definitely been a trend” toward consolidation in the industry, the group says service hasn’t suffered as a result. And working with law-enforcement to reduce false alarms is a top priority, she says.
Some people never find out what triggers their false alarms. Krijste Dial, a Salt Lake City emergency-room nurse, had a security system by Protection One Inc. installed in her home three years ago, and since has had “dozens” of false alarms — sometimes as many as four in a day — and incurred $895 in fines. “It’s the alarm system from hell,” says Dial.
A spokeswoman for Protection One says its records show Dial’s system has had 31 false alarms, and the company is still trying to figure out why. “We failed her,” the spokesman says. The company recently sent her a check for $732 for partial payment of her false-alarm bill.
While false alarms are still the homeowners’ responsibility, there are efforts to shift some responsibility to security companies. Under a law enacted last month in Palm Beach County, Fla., companies will be billed a fee to renew customers’ alarm permits; the amount of the fee will be determined by each company’s overall false-alarm rate. Beaubien, president of the False Alarm Reduction Association, believes it is the first ordinance in the country to hold companies, and not just consumers, accountable. “We’re very excited about it,” she says.
But Roy Pollack, president of the Alarm Association of Florida, says the law “punishes” the companies and ultimately won’t benefit consumers. Companies, he says, will pass along the cost of any fees to all of their customers — not just those with the highest number of false alarms. Moreover, he expects that in an effort to improve their false-alarm rates, companies will simply dump their most troubled customers, rather than fix the underlying problem.
