Just interested in people's experiences with home security monitoring companies such as ADT, Brinks, etc. I'd like to hear the good, bad, and ugly!

Thanks,
~Piz

Drive down to your Police Station and ask if you could sit in observing the police dispatcher. During a busy period of time think about a person breaking into your home and your alarm goes off. How much time from the alarm sounding until the arrival of the police. Police have a scale of what gets answered first all the way down to the cat in the tree call. Home security systems are nice but I would prefer hooking it up with my next door neighbors place because they are in the same boat as I am. We can keep an eye on their place as they can keep an eye on our place. Also motion detectors wired to a horn, motion detectors wired to exterior lighting and a tape recorder with your voice yelling, "Dog, sick'em".

I use ADT and am uery happy with them. The poice take about 5 min to get to the house which is not good but I figure it will keep someone from totally cleaning me out they might grab a pc or something but that is it.

The system they put in is good has a batt backup and is well built. I had one problem with the batt and they came out and fixed it right away no charge, but that was more related to my local adt dealer.

I have set off the alarm about 7 time, no faluse alarms just stupid stuff and all 7 time they called me within a minute or two.

I am happy with them.

Well I have been around the alarm industry for a little while. No alarm system is burglar proof, but I would definately have it monitored by someone. If the burglar wants to disable it he will just cut the phone lines, but in todays modern age you can get a cell back up relatively cheap. Ask your alarm company to set the panel up to sound the siren when the phone lines are cut and if they cant offer that then you need a different control panel. I have found this to be handy in the past, because if the siren starts ringing after 5 seconds of cutting the phone line most of the time the crook still isnt even inside. Just thought I would give you a little advice email me if I can help at all.