Someone’s breaking into the house! Protection One had better call the police!
Written: Oct 26 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: REALLY LOUD siren to scare off intruders
Cons: terrible billing department, a lot of technical problems
The Bottom Line: This home security system gives you peace of mind, but there are just too many billing and technical problems for me to recommend this particular company.
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| cjrmen12's Full Review: Home Security Systems |
We’ve had the Protection One Home Security System since September 1999, a month after we first moved into the 50-year-old house that we now call home. At the time, my husband was occasionally taking business trips for his company, and we felt better knowing that we would be constantly monitored while he was gone. The dealer, Western America Alarm associates (WAA), was going house to house setting up appointments with their sales people for the product company, Protection One (Pro-1).
WHAT WE SIGNED UP FOR
When we first signed up for Pro-1, we were locked into a 2-year contract at the cost of $35.95/month. For this monthly fee, we receive Pro-1 stickers and placards whenever we request them, 24-hour monitoring from their headquarters, and free repair service. If you break the contract early, you will still end up paying for the total cost of the system in 1-lump sum regardless of how many monthly payments you have already paid. If you stay with the contract, you will be getting the system for free, while still receiving the 24-hour monitoring throughout the 2 years.
THE EQUIPMENT
~~ The Keypad sports illuminated buttons and is mounted on the wall while being hard-wired to the main Pro-1 system box in our home. From here we enter in the codes to arm and disarm the alarm. There are different panic buttons that will immediately send a signal if there is an emergency. There is a view screen as well as a color indicator indicating the alarm status.
~~ The Siren measures approximately 3 ½“ X 5“ X 2" and is REALLY loud when it is set off. It sounds like a car alarm except it’s louder and faster. Outside of the house, it is not as noticeable. The intent of the siren is to scare the intruder into leaving the house, as well as alerting us.
My mother was babysitting my children and had the unfortunate experience of discovering its effectiveness first-hand. When I returned home, I must have accidentally pressed the Panic button on my key fob because I immediately heard the siren go off. I looked in the window and saw my mother and children hopping and running around like a scared rabbits. It looked like utter chaos in there.
~~ According to the specs, the motion detector can monitor up to an angle of 180° in front of it. Using infrared sensors, this will pick up any motion from a person. Our small children have set this off while we were testing it. They say that some small animals will not set off the alarm. We don’t have any warm-blooded pets (besides the kids), so we don’t know if this is true or not. If the alarm is armed, the siren will go off immediately. Our motion detectors use radio frequency to send the signals to the Pro-1 system box in our home, but Pro-1 also offers detectors that can be hard-wired throughout the house.
~~ The Door Sensors are mounted on the doors and the doorframes. Once the door is open, the alarm system is alerted via radio frequency. If the alarm is armed, the system will give you 1 minute to turn off the alarm before the siren goes off. You can also have a window sensor, but since we don’t have this feature I’m not sure how it works.
~~ The Key fob goes on your key chain, much like a car alarm key fob. There are 4 single touch buttons that will automatically arm the alarm in 2 different modes, disarm the alarm, and set off the alarm in Panic mode.
HOW IT WORKS
~~ Alarm modes ~~
There are different types of alarm modes. There are also codes to bypass specific monitors and sensors while still arming the rest of the system. When inputting the codes, you are required to enter in your own personal activation code plus the codes for whatever mode you wish to set the alarm in.
In Stay mode, the system will only arm the door sensors and will only trigger the alarm when a door is open, however you are free to move around in front of the motion detectors. In Away mode, the system will arm all of the door, window, and motion detectors. If any of the doors or windows is opened or if the motion detectors sense any movement, the alarm will be triggered. The system also has Panic mode which will IMMEDIATELY sound the alarm and send a signal directly to the monitoring headquarters.
There is a distress code that you can also enter that will indicate if you are being forced to turn off the alarm by an intruder, which will immediately signal the monitoring headquarters to send a police unit to your home while still disarming your system. We also have a Chime mode which will beep whenever any of the doors are opened so the kids don't go outside without us knowing it.
~~ Connections ~~
The alarm system is directly wired into our phone jack and is securely attached to our AC outlet with a screw. When there is a blackout, the system relies on its internal battery located in the main system box. If the phone lines are cut, this will send a signal directly to the monitoring headquarters.
~~ Checking in ~~
If the alarm is triggered and the siren goes off, the headquarters will then call our home and ask if everything is okay. We are required to give the password that we have initially selected. If there is no answer at our home, such as the phone keeps ringing, an answering machine picks it up, or there is a busy signal, Pro-1 will call the police to dispatch a police unit to our home.
RESPONSE TIME
We have set off our alarm accidentally a few times. If we set off the alarm and immediately turn it off, it will take up to a minute after we turn off the alarm for Pro-1 to call us.
You know that motto "If it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it"? Well, my husband’s motto is "If it ain’t broke, let’s take it apart anyway and see how it works". He was curious about one of our motion detectors and went ahead and took off the cover. A few seconds after he did that, we received a call from Pro-1 checking if everything was okay. Apparently, the system will send a signal indicating that it is being tampered with. This is pretty comforting to know in case an intruder tries to disarm our motion detectors.
TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
When we first got our alarm, we were diligent in turning off the alarm before we opened any doors. After awhile, sometimes we would forget to turn it off or we would arm and disarm the alarm while we were on the internet or the phone. Because of these, we discovered a few problems with our system.
~~ What IS that annoying sound? ~~
Whenever we would arm or disarm the alarm while we were on the phone or the internet, we would hear a continuous dialing out on the phone. Apparently, the alarm was trying to dial out to the monitoring headquarters. Since we were already using the phone line, the system was having problems. This would continue even 3 hours after we hung up the phone or disconnected the modem.
~~ Hello…hello…is anybody there? ~~
Whenever someone was on the phone or the internet and the panic was accidentally set off, not only would we hear the constant dialing out on the phone, once we hung up the phone we would lose our dial tone for about an hour afterwards. If this were a real emergency, we would be in a lot of danger. (NOTE: The alarm did work as it was supposed to as long as we were NOT on the phone or the internet when the alarm was set off.) I was forced to call on my cellular phone and found out later that the signal did not reach the monitoring headquarters.
~~ This sure isn’t the Energizer Bunny ~~
The internal batteries on the motion detectors have run out on us a few times. The battery life is indicated on the keypad view screen. We are required to contact the service department at Pro-1 to have the battery replaced since we are not allowed to tamper with it.
~~ So what are you guys going to do about it? ~~
We have not had any problems with scheduling a maintenance service worker to fix our alarm system. They are actually pretty good at coming out the next day and normally take less than an hour to figure out the problem. The first time we had a maintenance person at our home was to replace the battery in one of our motion detectors. The second service call we had finally fixed up the problems we had on our phone system due to the alarm’s initial configuration, which was set up for business alarms.
CUSTOMER SERVICE PROBLEMS
When we first signed our contract, we gave the WAA sales representative a check for the first month’s payment. For at least 4 months, we continued to receive a bill for that $35.95 that we had initially paid and it was mounting up on our balance. I was acting as a go-between for these 2 companies. WAA was saying that they had sent the check to Pro-1. But Pro-1 was saying that they never received it. This was finally resolved when I finally got the 2 companies to call each other directly and after WAA sent a copy of our check directly to Pro-1.
~~ Fixed at last…Whoops, not yet ~~
I thought our problems would stop after we signed up for automatic bill pay on our credit card. WRONG! Even after we had resolved the lost checks issue, we were sent notices from the Pro-1 billing department telling us that we still hadn’t paid the initial $35.95, and they threatened us with a disconnection of our services. This took over 4 months to straighten out. Occasionally, we do get a bill from their billing department for the month’s payment because of a computer glitch. While the customer service rep is polite about telling us to ignore the statement, it’s still irritating for us to have to call them every other month to fix the problem.
~~ How many times do we have to pay for this? ~~
We have also ordered additional motion detectors that were supposed to be charged directly to our credit card. We received another bill for this forcing me to call them twice to have this charged to our credit card. Whenever I call to request window stickers, we hardly ever receive them. The only good thing about customer service is they are normally very polite whenever we call or whenever they call us to confirm an emergency and it is actually a false alarm.
~~ Cancelling the service ~~
Our 2-year contract ended this past September. When we had first signed up, the WAA rep had told us that we would be on a month-to-month contract after the initial contract was fulfilled. We called Pro-1 to stop the 24-hour monitoring and discovered we were already contracted for another year. In addition, they had already taken out our payments from our credit card until December 2001. We needed to write a letter stating that we wished to cancel their service. Nowhere in our contract does it say that this letter was required to end the service. We’ve already faxed this letter to their accounting services. I wonder how many months it will take before they stop charging to our credit card.
OUR THOUGHTS ON THIS SYSTEM
Ever since our alarm system was finally repaired, we have been pretty happy with it. However, the overall technical and billing problems just make us tired of dealing with this company. Too often they would lose our checks and forget to charge our credit cards. I have just gotten tired of constantly having to contact them to straighten out our account balance.
~~ Some perks with having this system ~~
So what happens if your home does get broken into and your valuables are stolen? If you are still paying the monthly fee, Pro-1 will pay your Homeowners Insurance Deductible up to a maximum of $1000. If you aren’t paying the monthly fee, you’re on your own. The good thing is most Homeowners Insurance Policies will give you a discount if you have a monitored fire/burglar alarm system in your home. Our insurance gave us a 10% discount on our premiums.
RECOMMENDATION
One of the best preventatives to a break-in is to make your house appear undesirable to the intruder. In addition to the alarm system we also have motion detectors outside which will turn on a bright light whenever a warm-blooded creature comes within range of the sensor. We have heavy duty iron gates with dead bolts on both the front and rear entrances of our home. We also have the Pro-1 decals prominently displayed on our windows and their placards in plain view on our gates. A good alarm system is one that is easy to use. If the system is too difficult to operate, most likely the homeowners will not use it. Then how useful would it be?
Overall, this alarm does give us peace of mind that our home is being monitored and it IS easy to use; however, I wish we could have chosen a company that had a better billing department and a system that had less technical problems. I have to admit that we have been happy with the system since they’ve fixed the problems both with our account and the system itself. Other security systems that we see on our block are Bay-1 Alarm, Morgan Alarm, ADT, and Brinks. I’m not sure how good the other systems are, but because of the problems we’ve had with this company, I just wouldn’t feel right recommending the Protection-One Home Security System.
For more information about this company, go to their website at www.protectionone.com.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
cjrmen12
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Location: Bay Area
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 192 members
About Me:
Love games, 4wheeling , bodyboarding, volleyball, skydiving...until I had the kids...Baby#4 born on 5/10/05...
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