When Security Alarm Salesmen Attack

Aggressive. Deceptive. Manipulative. I’ve heard them all. When it comes to public perception, security alarm salesmen rank somewhere between lawyers and used car salesmen. It’s OK for me to say that. My name is Ryan Boder and I am a security alarm salesman. We get a bad rap. It’s unfortunate because there are so many good people in this industry. Today I’m going to show you a few lies I’ve heard from security alarm salesmen that happened to call me and bust them for you.

Yesterday I received a phone call from a Vivint security salesman that prompted me to write this article. When working in a call center and getting random phone numbers for sales wouldn’t it suck to draw the number of a very knowledgeable competitor? Sorry Jake. His pitch was good but it included misinformation that if I didn’t know better would have skewed my perception in his favor. I hate to pick on this one guy, the problem is pervasive in the industry, he just happens to be the one that set me off so we’ll start with him. He told me…

  • Vivint is the only company that can provide 2-way voice over GSM. FALSE. Many companies provide 2-way voice over GSM. We do at suretyCAM and I can think of a host of others that do too. Any Alarm.com dealer with a compatible central station supports this feature. Hint… Vivint is an Alarm.com dealer.
  • Vivint’s pet immune motion detectors won’t cause false alarms if you have cats in the house. FALSE. Vivint doesn’t manufacture their own motion detectors or any of their own equipment. They re-brand the same 2GIG motion detectors suretyCAM uses. These pet immune motion detectors do a pretty good job at ignoring pets but when a cat is jumping around quickly on a counter top, the back of a couch or anywhere several feet above ground they certainly will trigger false alarms.
  • Vivint has a 7 second average response time. FALSE. I research this topic all the time and I have seen Vivint officially claim to have a 17 second average response time which is excellent, I commend them for that, but the guy told me 7 seconds. It wasn’t a miscommunication, I asked him to repeat it, he clearly said 7 seconds.
  • Guardian is an ADT dealer that can’t do home automation. FALSE. I asked him to compare Vivint to a competitor he would know of. I used Guardian as an example because he was calling all the way from Utah so I doubt he’s heard of suretyCAM in Columbus Ohio yet. Guardian is another Alarm.com dealer like Vivint and suretyCAM but they’re relatively large so as a security professional he would definitely know them. He told me Guardian is just an ADT dealer, that they sell their accounts to ADT so they can make their money up front. Then he told me Guardian would try to sell me a Simon XT system which can’t do home automation like Vivint can. I retorted saying Guardian had already told me they can do home automation and his response was that maybe they can but they would have to upgrade the hardware to a more expensive alarm panel because the Simon XT can’t do home automation. In reality of course, Guardian is not an ADT dealer at all, they have their own central station with their own dealer program and they are a relatively large competitor to ADT and Vivint. As an Alarm.com dealer Guardian can do home automation like Vivint but Guardian uses a different alarm panel. Guardian uses the Interlogix Simon XT as their base home automation hardware whereas Vivint and suretyCAM both use 2GIG hardware. The Simon XT absolutely can do home automation. I still like 2GIG’s system better than the Simon XT but I wouldn’t lie about it.

There are a few more untruths I noted from that phone call but I don’t want to nitpick. The Vivint guy was actually very personable and easy to talk to unlike some security alarm salesmen I’ve dealt with. He even appeared to call from a local Columbus Ohio area code although I later found out he was actually calling from Utah through a dialer redirection service.

The previous week I ended up on the phone with Andrew from VMS Alarms, a Monitronics dealer who is all the way in Rhode Island. This guy actually had been calling a family member of mine for days and wouldn’t leave her alone so she asked me to talk to him, I was happy to oblige. He took the hard-line aggressive approach. In the first 20 minutes of conversation I barely got more than a “hello” in. He asked me some yes or no questions and any time I didn’t agree with him he would say something like “don’t you care about protecting your family?”. Offensive much? Of course I care about protecting my family that’s not the question, the question is whether I want to let YOU be my security alarm provider! I got a few gems from him as well…

  • Our average response time is 22.1 seconds and it’s the fastest in the industry. ADT is the second fastest with a 66 second average response time. FALSE. I believe that Monotronics has an average response time of 22.1 seconds but saying ADT is the next fastest with a 66 second average response time is ridiculous. After all, we just learned that Vivint’s average response time is 17 seconds. Or was it 7 seconds? 😉 Good central stations have an average response time of 15 to 30 seconds. Seconds count in a emergency but people focus way too much on average response time, similar to the way people overemphasize CPU clock speed (GHz) when comparing personal computers. Yes average response time matters but other factors usually have a greater significance. I consider maximum response time more important than average response time, which is more a function of how many operators are on staff than how fast each operator answers the phone. Exactly how the dispatcher handles the call can also be more important than average response time. A well trained operator following a sound protocol might take a little longer but they’re taking valuable steps to handle the situation right. The two events that matter most are 1) when the alarms sounds and 2) when the police show up. How long it takes for the central station to call you effects the latter but it’s not the only factor. The police response time usually eclipses the central station’s response time and alarm companies often even program their panels to have longer than necessary entry delays and dialer delays which could add 15, 30 or 45 seconds to the overall response time in an effort to reduce false alarms. A certification that measures quality such as the CSAA 5 Diamond program is a better indicator of how good a central station is than average response. If I were a buyer I’d be a lot more concerned with the quality of the installation and that the system will reliably detect an intrusion than a few seconds here or there on the central station’s average response time.
  • I can only offer this deal if we can do the installation today. FALSE. Think about it. Does that make any sense? Do you really want to trust your home security with a company whose business model is so unstable that they have to jack their prices up drastically tomorrow? Why are they always increasing prices tomorrow if you don’t buy today? If they really did that every day the prices would be astronomical by now. Take your time to think about your purchase. Choosing your home security provider is an important decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. They’re not all the same. There are highly trained security engineers, there are fly-by-night trunk slammers and there is everything in between. Pick someone you feel comfortable with. Trust me, if you decide you want to buy then the deal will still be there when the timing is right for you.
  • I’m going to upgrade your motion detector to be pet immune, free of charge. TRUE, BUT… I can’t remember seeing a new motion detector recently that isn’t pet immune. They pretty much all have that feature and it doesn’t usually cost extra so you’re not really getting an upgrade, your getting the same motion detector you would have anyway.

The VMS Alarms salesman was painfully persistent. He called back 6 times later that day trying to talk us into getting a system installed that night.

Here are a few more claims I’ve heard from security salesmen to watch out for…

  • Our alarm equipment is the only one with _____ feature. PROBABLY FALSE. There are thousands and thousands of security alarm companies in the United States and they all use equipment made by only a few equipment manufacturers. The ones I run across most are Honeywell/Ademco, Interlogix/GE, DSC, NAAPCO, DMP and of course 2GIG. ADT is the largest security alarm company in the world and even they don’t manufacture their own equipment, they just re-brand it. If one company has a feature, odds are other companies that use the same equipment have the same feature. Consider equipment features but pick the company you think will serve you the best.
  • We’ll give you $_____ worth of free equipment. FALSE. It’s not free. You’re simply financing it. The alarm company is giving you a loan to pay for that equipment and you are paying it off monthly during your contract period. You’re monthly rate is higher because of the “free” equipment. If it wasn’t, how would your alarm provider stay in business? There’s nothing wrong with the idea of financing your alarm equipment but I often find the value of the equipment is inflated to convince you you’re getting a better deal than you really are.
  • Small, local security alarm companies are lower quality that the big names you see advertised everywhere. FALSE. It’s up to you to judge the quality of the security provider you choose. Often the smaller local companies are run by highly skilled people who used to work for the big companies and left because they wanted to do a better job than they could previously. Typically the small companies use big companies as their central station anyway so you get the monitoring station reliability of a large company with the personal service from a smaller company.

The security alarm industry, like any industry, has a wide variety of people and a wide variety of salesman. I know and respect many great security sales people and I thank them for helping us maintain a certain level of dignity. When you find a good one, please be nice to them (especially if it’s me). On the other hand, when you think you smell a rat don’t be afraid to ask questions and never be afraid to take time and think it over before choosing who you will let secure your home.

 

Written by Ryan Boder and originally posted here: When Security Alarm Salesmen Attack

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