"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Simon" writes:
Hello -

My fairly elderly parents have a fairly elderly alarm system. They are
currently being charged about £25 per month by a maintenance company,
and
I'd like to know how easy it would be to do the maintenance myself.
FWIW,
they already have several noisy dogs and live in a safe area, so I'm not
sure this thing is worth the cost of the contract. The user manual
identifies it as an Anglian "Defender 3000", but this doesn't generate
any
hits in Google; presumably it's a rebadged version of a better known
model.

The supplied manuals are very basic and don't even tell you how to
change
the batteries in the wireless sensors without setting it off, ensuring a
reliable revenue stream for the maintenance company. There's a picture
of it
he http://i12.tinypic.com/490cq5x.jpg

Any ideas on what it is and how I perform basic maintenance?

The alarm probably belongs to the maintenance company, and
you will not have the relevant access codes to maintain it
yourself. Check the contract you have with them.

It looks like a wireless alarm, and if you are happy with
those, just cancel the contract and ask them to collect it
(which they might not bother doing) and buy and install your
own.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Thanks for the replies. I'm pretty sure the alarm was belongs to my
parents - they have the receipts for the initial installation. The
maintenance company (no longer part of Anglian) just replace batteries in
the numerous wireless sensors, check the bellbox, keyfobs and smoke alarm.
The alarm doesn't have a numeric keypad, so presumably it can be put into
maintenance mode by pressing some combination of the buttons in the photo
and the button on the user's keyfob, or using a special engineer's wireless
keyfob, in which case I'm stuffed.