In an article that is sure not to earn me too many new friends in the alarm industry, I was quoted in SP&T News magazine this week saying that “the alarm industry is a parasite on the Police”. Since I used that line in an interview on the Bill Good Show on CKNW, it has taken on a life of its own. Certainly within the industry, many people seem to have really hung onto it and either told me that they agree or, much more often, criticized me for speaking out at all. (That quote in the article was taken from this blog).
The article discusses the continuing problem that the vast majority of alarm dispatches are false and that Police departments throughout North America are struggling to keep up with the increased demand that they cause. The article mentions the fact that Provident provides our own immediate response service. It also discusses one of the alternative initiatives that the alarm industry has come up with called ‘Enhanced Call Verification’ or ECV.
Enhanced Call Verification is a policy that is being widely heralded throughout the alarm industry as the solution to the false alarm issue. ADT is among the many firms promoting ECV as a ‘feature’ that will help prevent false alarms. While the Police will certainly want to support this initiative, as pointed out in this article from Police Chief Magazine, ECV comes at a huge cost to alarm owners.
While the alarm companies that use ECV are patting themselves on the back for reducing Police dispatches, they are all but guaranteeing an easier and stress free experience for burglars everywhere.
“Enhanced Call Verification” is a fancy way of saying that instead of calling just one phone number after an alarm (typically the premises number for the alarm location), the alarm company will call two. That’s it. That’s the enhanced part. Rather than wasting time making one call, now your alarm company will waste time making two.
So now, when burglars are breaking into your home, the alarm company will first call your house and then, if they cannot reach you there, try you on your cell phone. When you confirm that you are not at home, only then will the alarm company try to call the Police. While this ‘program’ succeeds in reducing the number of false dispatches to the Police, it does so at the expense of rendering your alarm virtually useless.
The only, only, only reason to have a monitored alarm is to generate an immediate response. That’s it. An alarm is NOT a deterrent. It’s only value is in providing information that has a very short shelf life… if the information that it provides is not acted upon immediately, it loses all value. Enhanced Call Verification is a guarantee that in the event of an alarm, your alarm will provide zero value.
The only reason that the alarm industry is promoting the ECV concept so hard is to try and hold on, for as long as possible, the profits generated from charging a monthly monitoring fee for a ‘service’ that costs so little to provide. The alarm industry is the only industry that I can think of that gets away with selling a service that, in order to provide any real value, relies exclusively on a Government agency (over whom it has no control). Who else gets away with that?
The Police CANNOT provide immediate response to private burglar alarms. The solution is to provide private, but immediate, verification. This can be achieved by using immediate guard response, video verification and, (if for no other reason that to prove that we aren’t just trying to promote our own services here), audio verification.
If you cannot afford to pay for immediate verification, why pay for monitoring at all? I’d suggest re-allocating the money you are spending on ECV monitoring to increasing your physical security… better locks, stronger door frames, laminated glass or a safe.