Who here has an alarm system?

How much do you pay per month? Is it monitoring only, or monitoring plus service calls?

How was it installed -- by the company, or do it yourself?

Has it served you well (any significant issues that it has 'saved' you from)?

Would you do it again?

What caused you to buy/not buy a system?

Thanks!

Edit: Can a moderator add an answer to the poll: "No; I do not have one, but plan to have one installed within a year." If you would vote this, please hold off and do not vote!

Another poll answer possibility - "No. I can't or don't place the expense high on my priority list."

We don't have one, unless you count our leathal weapons or our intruder killing dog. We live in a safe enough neighborhood that we don't feel it's necessary. But if I had 'excess' money then I'd probably get one after some very extensive research (I've heard too many horror stories about irresponsible companies).

We did use those stick on window alarms once. We put one on the food pantry door to keep our little one out. My dear old dad was the first to find it Those things are loud!

We have a simple one installed by ADT -- it has detectors for the two doors plus a motion detector for when nobody's home. We don't have pets but apparently the motion detector ignores cats and small dogs. It costs $35/month. They monitor, call you if the alarm goes off, and if you don't answer or don't give the right code, they call the police. They also monitor for the fire alarm. The motion detector is wireless, which is great, although it does mean you have to replace the battery every couple of years.

Our neighborhood is relatively safe, but we're right at the edge of Montréal's most dangerous borough with the highest gang activity and murder rate. It's funny, my brother is in the same situation -- he lives in East Palo Alto, California, but about 25 feet from the border with Menlo Park. Most of our neighbors have alarm systems and there have been burglaries on our street in the past, so we figured we'd play it safe. We're in a bit of an enclave, nice homes, fairly wealthy people, but if you walk to the end of the street you're in a poverty zone with housing projects and a lot of petty (and not so petty) crime. Plus there have been a lot of home invasions in Montréal in recent years, so we sleep better at night when the alarm is set.

Brad, how is your brother's situation similar? Menlo Park is the most expensive real estate in the country.

If it helps you sleep better at night, that's a big consideration. If it lowers your homeowner insurance bills, that's a consideration too. Keep in mind, however, that most of your stuff is probably insured, right? So it's not a huge deal if it gets stolen. Besides that, your chance of actually being harmed during a home invasion are quite slim in the scheme of things. At least you're considering an alarm and not a firearm.

It goes without saying that locking your door is the best way to keep your crap from being stolen. If I were a thief, I'd just knock on doors and if no one answered, walk around and test every door to find one unlocked.

FWIW, I live in an attached studio behind a house at the end of a dead end street. I recently left my doors unlocked for the week and half I was gone for the holidays.

Ryan

What I mean is that he lives right at the border of two worlds: Meno Park (impossibly wealthy) and East Palo Alto (lots of crime and poverty). There have been murders in his apartment building. He lives on the E. Palo Alto side but in a few short steps he is in Menlo Park. It's similar for us but the other way around: our immediate neighborhood is wealthy but there is a very poor area just at the end of our street.



It's not a huge deal but a major inconvenience since I work at home and if my computers were stolen (which are pretty much the most valuable things I own, not saying much but there you go) it would take a couple of days for me to be up and running again even with my offsite backup systems etc. Plus I own a few musical instruments that are essentially irreplaceable...not that much value to anyone on the street, but for me they are priceless; losing them would be like losing a member of my family.



Not true here -- most of the home invasions in Montreal have involved murder or injury to the homeowners/renters. In some cases they take the person to an ATM and make them withdraw as much money as the machine will allow, then take them back to the house and kill them or tie them up. There was a rash of them (30 or 40) in 2006; I don't think as many in 2007 but you never know.



When I lived in Vermont, I spent five years living in a rented house where I didn't even own keys to the doors. When I asked my landlord if he had a key he just laughed and said "keys are for city people, you don't have to worry about that here." True enough, although some teenagers stole my landlord's trampoline from his front yard one night, and another bunch of teenagers stole some of my stuff from the barn a year later.

Buy an ADT sign off eBay. It's about as useful, and far cheaper. This is what we did at our old house, though I must admit that our new house had an alarm system already installed and we ended up keeping the monitoring service.

Have you ever seen It Takes A Thief? It's a show on the Discovery Channel hosted by two ex-thieves. I've watched a few episodes and found them to be quite informational; they go into depth about why they pick the neighborhoods/houses they do, how they break in, and then afterwards, they actually provide a home-security makeover. I made my Dad watch it, and he found it very enlightening as well.

Back to your question about alarm systems, I think it all depends on (a) how likely your home will be a target, and (b) how many valuables/irreplacable items are in your house. It's true that alarm systems act as deterrents; just an ADT sign will make the thief more likely to target another place. On the other hand, if no one in your neighborhood as an alarm system, and you do, the thief may think that you have something of great value in the house. My parents have a fairly simple system installed by ADT, similar to Brad's, and I think it's mostly for their peace of mind, since they live in a nice neighborhood and half the houses on the block appear to have some alarm system installed.

Brad, thanks for the response. I didn't mean to direct most of those comments to you, except for the one about your brother. I get that one now.

As for the home invasion thing: I meant in the scheme of, y'know, life, not what % of home invasions end up in death. I don't know that at all. But even with "rash of them" [robbery-homicides] in 2006, Canada is still pretty safe, eh?

You're right about the computers and priceless stuff being stolen though. My girlfriend's aunt had her car broken into a few months back. The most valuable thing lost: a grade book from her middle school class with absolutely no value to the thief.

Ryan

To inject some humor of the "adding insult to injury" type. A friend of mine in college had his car broken into and his CD's stolen along with his stereo. About half a block away we found one (and only one) CD from the binder laying on the ground. It was the Skid Row disc. Apparently even the theif didn't want to be seen with that album.

A similar thing happened to my then-boyfriend a number of years ago. His car was broken into by a particularly malicious thief who broke not one but both of the front windows and stole the CDs he wanted. As for the CDs the thief didn't like, he left them there, but not before scratching the heck out of them.