This was written by Larry Love (801) 428 1384 Larry@peakalarm.com if there is any information that is incorrect or that you would like taken down please contact Larry
I served the people of the State of Utah by service on the Alarm System Security and Licensing board for over 7 years. I was appointed by the Acting Governor Olene Walker. As chairman of this board I was also a member of the Construction trade commission which is a policy making board. While serving on these boards I met many wonderful people such as Scott Sessions with Mountain Alarm, Will Naegle with Alarm control and Jeff Howe with Peak Alarm all of whom are honest and well known businessmen in our community. I can't make a full list of all the people I dealt with but this is a short list of great companies that are all local companies. Mountain Alarm is the largest of the three and within the family they also own a UL listed Central Station (Also known as Fire Protection Services - Central Station is Avantguard) Alarm Control does incredible work and most of their work is commercial and they can solve hard to handle intrusion issues. (Also known as Armed Alert) Peak Alarm is unique in the fact that they have an Alarm division, Guard and Patrol Division, AV Division and a UL listed Central Stationwww.mountainalarm.com Scott Sessions www.alarmcontrol.com Will Naegle www.peakalarm.com Jeff Howe Having worked with these individuals for years you get to know them well, how they speak, how they act and most importantly what kind of people they are. With the state of Utah being full of alarm companies that send people out to other states to knock doors and most of those businesses are just looking for the quick residential systems that can be put in in a couple of hours or less. The list of the above three companies have great records with the Better Business Bureau unlike some of the other competitors that have several thousand complaints. Take care when getting proposals from alarm companies to do your research first and remember you do get what you pay for and there is no free lunch. Some of these companies claim to provide free equipment or labor but don't be deceived. If you sign a 36 month agreement with Peak ALarm for $45 dollars a month (A typical monitoring rate for interactive cellular) you would pay $1,620.00 over 36 months. If you sign a 60 month agreement with another company at $45 per month you would pay $2,700 over 60 months or 5 years and they say it is free equipment but you are really paying for it and if you decide to change monitoring they will take you to court and force you to pay what they call BOC or Balance of Contract in order to get out of the contract. The kicker is that these companies often will charge you $70 per month for 5 years or $4,200 which is over double what Peak charges. Granted each system is different and there are many factors such as whether the system is encrypted making is much less likely to hack and how many devices are on the system and the services that you have each month. Example of some of the services: Typical Monitoring $35 per month (This can vary when you bundle other services) Alarm Response where we sent a uniformed guard in a marked car to your home or business $10 per month (Only in specific areas) Key Response where you have a keybox on your property so in the event of an alarm we would send a guard out to check the inside of the property $20 per month Schedules, text or email notification, openings and closings (alert you if your store is opened too early or not armed on time or disarmed on time) Some other services Cellular Monitoring $15 per month (Includes interactive arm and disarming) Home automation services such as locks, lighting control, thermostat control, garage door control also are other such services that can be bundled Commercial Fire monitoring is normally $35 for landline or $48 for high supervision cellular or radio
Years after I began on the Alarm System Security and Licensing Board for DOPL one of the companies that has lots of complaints with the BBB started sending a lawyer to each of our meetings to observe. I understand why they would do this. This company happens to be very large and has a great deal of accounts. This company had been accused of deceptive business practices and had been sued in several states and even recently was ordered to pay 10 million dollars to another alarm company. We were even told by the company owners that since they had thousands of salespeople it was very hard for them to control the actions of so many people. At Peak Alarm for example when a salesperson does something they should not do they are reprimanted and receive a written warning and if it happens again they can be let go. If any of the sales people do not qualify or pass the FBI background check they are let go and I know this is the same at Mountain as well as Alarm Control. One large company that had an employee not pass the back ground check simply transferred him to another state where the licensing laws will allow a person with a felony to sell or install security systems.
So there are honest alarm companies out there that you can use, you can get bids from them and worry less since you have done your research on the people the company and their business practices. All companies will have complaints on the internet. Looking at the www.bbb.org complaints is a bit better since they know both sides will be investigated. Many people hesitate to file a complaint with the bbb if they know they were in the wrong and if it is investigated the truth will come out. Two of the above listed companies have zero complaints on the BBB and one of them only has 5 compared to over 4000 with another Utah based company.
