How many times have the police been dispatched to your home because visitors, family, child care providers, domestic help, real estate agents, contractors or untrained employees have set off your alarm and did not know what to do?
Make sure everyone, who has access to your alarm site, such as childcare providers, domestic help, extended family, opening/closing employees etc., is familiar with the alarm system. Please take the following steps to reduce the chance of a false alarm.
- Teach them how to arm the system and make sure they know how much time they have to exit if they are leaving.
- If entering, ensure they know how to disarm the system and how much time they have before the system alerts your monitoring center.
- Impress upon them the importance of canceling a false alarm. Provide them with your monitoring company’s phone number and make sure they know how to properly cancel an alarm dispatch, if it is false.
- Contact your alarm company and assign each person their own personal passcode/password. You can have it removed when it is no longer needed.
- Educate your guests/employees on your alarm monitoring company’s procedures should they set off the alarm accidentally.
- Teach them how to avoid needless police response and assessment of potential fees or fines.
- Keep your monitoring center’s phone number in an easy to find place and let them know where it is.
- If you’re going out of town and have a house-sitter, make sure they have permission to authorize repairs to your system if it fails.
- Make sure everyone who has access to your home or business has a valid code to arm and disarm your alarm system as well as the code or password used to identify themselves as a valid alarm user