I’ve heard horror stories of ADT here and elsewhere, so that’s right out. I know that having one is kinda dumb; better to have excellent locks, window locks and metal guards/deterrents but a housemate is willing to split the cost, so what the hell. It may even bring down homeowner’s insurance rates.
I have a basement door, back door and front door. It’s a small single family row home, 3 bed 2 bath, 1200 sq feet. New windows, new doors, new deadbolts. I have a home phone line through FIOS as well. I’d like minimal hassle and not to pay more than $50/month.
Monthly monitoring fees should be much less than $50, maybe $30. We got a local firm to do our installation and it was a bit pricey, but they did a great job (same guys who did Tom Clancy’s home). However, balance your home type, crime in the area, and other factors to decide whether you really need to do this at all. Also remember that you will get an occasional false alarm which can be a hassle
My monitoring service is $20 a month.
We’re paying 36 a month, for Vector Security.
I won’t use ADT because of their marketing tactics: 18 years ago, a woman was raped on our block. She was nabbed as she arrived home late one evening - outside her house (as in, a security system wouldn’t have helped at all) - but ADT shoved sales brochures in every door on the block for the next 2 weeks.
That said - we probably wouldn’t have bothered, except when our son started middle school, his schedule was such that he’d be home alone for a couple hours every afternoon. He has mild autism and is very sensitive to noise, and once when an alarm went off (former owners installed it, it wasn’t connected but something glitched and it sounded) he ran and hid in his room.
So, we were worried that if, say, a fire happened and the smoke detectors went off, he’d hide rather than leave the house.
We’ve never actually activated the alarm system. But at least we have the monitoring so if the place catches fire when we’re not home, the fire department would be dispatched.
Mama Zappa, I’m confused – you said you pay $36/mo but that you haven’t activated it? How does it monitor the house?
Sorry - what I mean is, we have never turned on the burglar-alarm portion of it - e.g. when leaving the house or going to bed at night, we don’t enable the alarm. Mainly because I know we or the kids would set off false alarms all the time. The system is monitored, in case of fire; one time we got a call from the company because a power glitch had sent the wrong signal as well.