Alarm system upgrade

This evening, a sales guy for an alarm company stopped by the house offering to upgrade our home alarm system for the privilege of a 36 month display of their alarm monitoring system sign in our front yard.

The sales guy, a tall, blond haired, blue eyed very slow speaking 20-something explained that they were in the process of promoting their service in local neighborhoods and that they had 2 options available. Upgrade the current alarm system in the house to a current, satellite and cellular network based system or lower the monthly monitoring fee.

After speaking at length with Adam, we opted to have the alarm system upgraded to a new system that will include:

• A new Smoke detector
• (2) individual keyfobs that allow remote arming and disarming of the system from a distance
• Access to all of the functions of the alarm system from a web-based control system, giving me access to the alarm system from any Internet connected computer in the world, or from my cell phone for that matter.

Now, the monthly monitoring fee will rrise, from our current $35 a month to $44.  For all of the added functionality and the fact that the alarm system will no longer be phone-line based (all connections use the cellular network, and thus are not subject to disabling by would-be thieves cutting the phone line outside the house), I thought paying an additional $9 a month was well worth it.

It turns out that notifying my Home Insurance company of the upgraded alarm system will reduce my insurance premiums enough to cover the added monthly cost.

The alarm is scheduled to be installed tomorrow, I am looking forward to being able to monitor the house alarm system from anywhere I am.