Thanks Special Ed and SQlit,

The guy was out of contracts by the time he got to my house, and so when I
called him later and asked him to deliver me the paperwork with all the
numbers and info. before installation, he just kept saying that the
'installer' would have it for me to sign. Well, I told him that I like to
have my paperwork to review for a couple of days, he said that 'the
installer would have it for me to sign'. Well, then I went back to my
Consumer Report article, and realized I had missed 10 questions I needed to
ask. So I called and asked away, that was when I found out that they want a
3 year contract. He never mentioned that to me! Also, when he bragged on
the insurance discount, I called my agent and she said there was none unless
I was going to get a monitored fire alarm, which only people who have much
more expensive homes than I do, do.

I really like the system, but I don't like the 'make it convient for me, the
salesman' attitude. I also don't like the fact that he never mentioned the
3 year contract!

Well, I am calling him tomorrow and telling him that unless he comes over
with the paperwork ahead of time, I won't be getting the system. I am not
going to be pressured into something, esp. when ATD came over and sat with
me and left me with paperwork. I mean really, he could have Express mailed
them to me if he didn't want to come over to this part of town! ugh!

Thank you for the inf.

I will call the local police and find out about the dialer issue. If I can
hire a private company to install a system that will work with the local
police, then I am good to go.

Thanks again

God bless,
KJ



Keep shopping around.
I found a site that will monitor my home for 8.95 a month.
http://www.nextalarm.com/index.jsp?ad=gaw3
google has several that are less than 10 bucks a month.
READ the contract before you sign. My last alarm company had a 5 year
automatic renewal. When I sold my home they wanted 2 years payments.
Really
****ed me off.
My new home has an alarm and they would have taken it over, but they
wanted
a new contract and 18 bucks more a month than what I was paying. In the
crapper for them


The town I live in has a specific phone # at the police station for alarm
system dialers that use audio messages. We have to apply for a permit and
after a certain number of false alarms in a year fees are implemented per
false alarm. The police are good about responding in a timely fashion (I
have found that out after a couple false alarms that were my fault) and with
this setup there is no monthly monitoring fees. I also like to be able to
add other phone #'s (cell phones, neighbors) to the dialer that alert me/us
directly of an alarm. This system was installed by a private company and no
contract or commitment was required. I know most alarm companies make their
$ from their monitoring service and your town might not allow dialers to be
hooked up to the police but if this kind of setup is available you'll
certainly save $ on monitoring service fees (although you won't get a free
system).