My first job out of high school — and before I though college was important — was as a salesmen at Circuit City selling car stereos (and installing them). One thing I learned is it never pays to be rude to the customers. At one time I was also a door to door sign salesmen, which only lasted about six months because it was the worst job I ever had — okay, not the worst but pretty bad. So I also know how much harder it can be to cold call people, than to stand in a store and wait for customer who are at least semi-intersted in your products.
Anyways, so a door to door salesmen just stopped by selling home alarms. He had a GE shirt on, but I’m not sure who he actually worked for. He started out with a lie — never a good first start — by commenting that his company made the keypad in my house. Little did he know I knew a thing or two about alarm systems. His next question was, “when’s the last time someone looked at your alarm?” And I answered, “I installed it myself.” He was obviously not happy with my answer so he asked, “oh, where’d you get the panel,” to which I replied, “I bought it online.” If he was smart, he would’ve stopped here, but no, he had to take one last chance at me with, “who monitors it?” By now you should know exactly where this is going, as I’m sure he wasn’t one bit surprised to hear me say “a company on the Internet.” At this point he got down right rude and said, “Let me guess, $7 a month and they leave a VM for the police?” I replied “yes” because I didn’t want to waste my time getting into with him, but I know very well that they call the police when the alarm goes off because I had to give them the number when I signed up, and the police have showed up when for a false alarm before. They also call me, send me an email and a text message. To top it off the service also works over a traditional phone line or the Internet.
I understand why the guy got rude, but seriously like that’s going to help the situation. He had the perfect opportunity to put a good face forward for his company and tell me how much better his service was then my current provider, but nope, instead he got a bad post about his company online. Do they care, nah, they’re GE and they’re huge.
He may not have been selling alarm systems. He may have been a burgler checking if you were an easy target. You should never discuss your security system with anyone who just walks up to your door.
Dennis,
Nice point, and I just gave him everything he needed to know!
But I guess it isn’t too hard to find out, as he could see my keypad from where he was standing and being able to cut the services to someone’s house in an attempt to disable the ability for the alarm to notify the police is pretty standard.
He still has no idea where my panel is installed, how many sirens I have etc, and yeah, I’m obsessive compulsive so it’s complex.
Alarm systems are for nancies. I have a trained attack armadillo.
I’ve been visiting your site lately to follow your VMC saga. This post just provided me with an awesome tip for the alarm monitoring company your mentioned. I’m moving into a new house next week and I will definitely use them for monitoring my system.
You’ve been happy so far?
By the way, I’m a fellow resident of Tampa, and I’d love to start some sort of meetup group or something for all of us computer/HD nerds to get together. Any thoughts?
John,
I haven’t had any problem with Next Alarm and I’d recommend them to others.
I’ve been an active member of TampaHDTV.com since it came into existence. It’s been some time since we got together, but it is long overdue. If you don’t already post over there, you should, but the next time we plan a get together I’ll try to remember to post it here.
Scam! This month’s Consumer Reports specifically mentions folks wearing GE or Honeywell apparel and selling security door-to-door is a scam.