The good bad and the ugly of Peak Alarm

Lets start with the bad and the ugly and then go to the good last.

There is a court case from several years ago that comes up where Peak Alarm dispatched the Police to a school based on information from a person on site at the school. There was some misunderstood communications between the person on site, the dispatcher and the manager in Peak Alarm dispatch. As it turned out the police department charged Peak with reacting improperly to an alarm and there was a court case where Peak came out on top. Peak Alarm then sued the city based on principle and did not win that case. You can read the court documents although like all court documents it is boring reading. The owners of Peak Alarm supported their employees in the decisions that were made and spent money defending them. As you may know Salt Lake Police currently has a non response policy when it comes to alarms in Salt Lake City unless they are panic alarms or verified alarms.

There are mixed feelings about that because many people believe the very fact that a police car drives through a neighborhood rather than siting in some parking lot somewhere is a deterrent. When criminals see police cars they are less likely to be as active in those areas.

The police department says that too many of the alarms are false alarms and that is why they don't want to waste their time responding to them when they have many other important duties. Some cities will respond when they are not on a higher priority call although Salt Lake City has decided not to.

When researching you will find some negative information on most companies, Internet reviews are a mixed bag since many companies pay for those reviews and sites to move them up on the search engines. Hits on keywords such as the TOP 10 Security Companies in Utah provide you with lists of companies that in some cases have thousands of complaints that have been filed with the Better Business Bureau and some of those companies are being sued in several States. Once you get a company name off a list such as that, check the BBB, check their reviews before purchasing. Many times the low price leaders have thousands of complaints that have been filed.

Peak Alarm is a large company and as such you will find that their policies are set and they may not be as flexible as some smaller companies. Peak requires that you sign an agreement before they will do any work. This agreement protects them from law suits and sometimes you can go with a smaller company and get lower labor rates although sometimes you compromise when it comes to those companies being insured, licensed and them being able to provide the serivces they advertise. Many trunk slammers as we refer to them have lower labor rates but often are not licensed or insured.

Peak Alarm is not an insurance company although they carry over and above the recommended insurance for the State of Utah.

Peak is large enough that often their wait times can be longer than other companies because of the work load.

Having said that, the smaller residential systems can be installed generally within one week. Many of the other companies can install those systems on the same day although some of those companies are the ones that have over 3000 complaints in the last 3 years when Peak Alarm only has had 3 complaints filed in the last three years on the BBB site. There is a reason for this. Two of the complaints were about billing and one about product. The President of Peak Alarm takes those complaints seriously and has recently made some changes with the company that does collections for Peak Alarm and there has been additional training in the accounting department.

Peak Alarm strives to get repeat business and keep customers happy although to get parts delivered or have changes made to your project everything must be in writing. This is one of the drawbacks to being a very large company, nothing is done with a handshake. Good and bad I guess.

The ugly as promised: I worked at a small company for 16 years before coming to Peak and now that I have been here for over a year I have seen the good things and the not so good things. The red tape is often hard to deal with. Where I was before, I did the estimating, the ordering, the delivery and sometimes the installation. That is not the case here at Peak. They have different departments and paperwork takes a bit longer to move through the chain of command. The owner still looks at each and every job and he still signs all the checks. After you turn your paperwork in to a salesperson, it goes to a secretary that checks it for errors and kicks it back if there are signature or initials missing. Then it goes to a manager for approval and then it gets scanned and sent to the different departments such as accounting, installation and the department that orders the parts. When the paperwork is filled out properly everything goes well, if something was left off for example like a camera mount then an order change has to go back through the same process so the time it takes to do this adds a bit of frustration for some people. When the manager that checks those documents is in a meeting sometimes the paperwork gets put off for a few hours until he can get to it. Almost everyone here at Peak Alarm is cross trained so if you get sick or die the process does not stop but keeps going. Large companies have a harder time being personal although Peak still does ok at many things when it comes to this but they are a business so they run like one.

CHEAP FAST OR GOOD - (Pick two) This is so true so be careful when picking an alarm company.

THE GOOD -

Peak Alarm is a local family owned business and has been in business for over 46 years (Since 1969) Peak Alarm was awarded "Alarm Company of the year in 2015" Utah Security Association Peak Alarm is rated #61 in the Nation this year By SDM MAGAZINE 2015 Peak AV was rated #18 in the country by CE PRO MAGAZINE 2015 Peak Alarm has their own Patrol and Guard divisions when most other companies hire this service out Peak Alarm is a UL listed Central Station also certified for high security installations such as UL2050 Peak Alarm is among very few companies that are UL listed and 5 Diamond Certified (Each dispatcher trained to respond to emergency situations) Peak Alarm has offices in Salt Lake, Saint George, Boise and Idaho Falls to serve you in Utah and Idaho Peak Alarm has over 270 employees Peak has an A+ rating with the BBB Better Business Bureau http://www.bbb.org Peak Alarm does not pull your credit report like most security companies do The company has NICET technicians and techs that are certified by the Utah State Fire Marshals office With a CAD department that can design and print your alarm layouts Peak separates itself from most local competitors Certified and factory trained in several brands of Alarm systems - DMP, Hochiki, Silent Knight, DSX etc.... With a full working AES Radio network Peak uses state of the art technology to monitor your alarms either cellular, radio, internet or phone lines. Peak is a Netone company meaning it is part of a network of the best security companies in the US. There is only one Netone company for Utah/Idaho

Peak Accounting department now has a non-recorded line they switch you to when you use a card or checking account to pay so that information stays private. Peak asks customers to not email or fax their credit card information to keep it safe.

Peak Alarm also installs Qolsys and DMP encrypted security systems and they do cost a bit more than un-encrypted systems but you get what you pay for. www.qolsys.com

FIRE ALARMS - INTRUSION - CAMERAS - ACCESS CONTROL - NURSE CALL - INTERCOM

Hochiki - Bosch - Silent Knight - Firelite - DMP - DSX - AXIS - FLIR - are a few of the lines that Peak Alarm installs