Security Tips
Why Monitoring is Worth the Money
• 5 minutes read
Many people think that professional monitoring is just a way for alarm companies to make money off of clients. We fathom that we will buy a DIY alarm system with no contracts and we can self monitor our house from our phone. But what if your house is burglarized while you are in a meeting, in a plane over the Pacific Ocean, in a cell phone dead-zone, or while you’re snorkeling?
Nobody ever plans their dream family vacation to Hawaii to include hours of anxious phone calls with the police, insurance companies, banks, and airlines in order to make emergency flight changes so you can return home and assess the situation. With professional monitoring, instead of the responsibility falling solely on you to maintain mobile internet connectivity and monitor for notifications alerting you of a break-in, a team of professionals monitors your alarm system around the clock so you can rest assured knowing your monitoring service has dispatched the authorities and is taking care of the situation should anything happen while you are unavailable.
Alarm monitoring is a very simple but important service:
- Your alarm is triggered
- You’re contacted automatically by someone at a monitoring center
- If you don’t respond because you’re snorkeling, or you do respond and tell the person that you have no idea who would be in your house right now, then the monitoring service will notify the authorities immediately and supply them with any information that they will need to apprehend the intruders.
The fact is, according to the FBI, 65% of burglaries happen between 6am and 6pm, and last between 8-12 minutes for a typical size family home, with condos and apartments sometimes lasting as little as 2 minutes for advantageous thieves that quickly run through and grab of value in sight. On average, these break ins result in more than $2,000 dollars of lost or damaged property. No matter what the time frame, any extra second given to a thief to steal your belongings is too much. By the time you have recognized that you received a notification, checked your alarm app to see where the intruders entered, verified that it was indeed a break in, and then dialed and connected with the police dispatch, the odds are good that the burglars are long gone, taking with them expensive items and those that you can’t put a dollar amount on like your great-grandmother’s prized bone China dinnerware. In this way, alarm monitoring is a form of home insurance; it ensures that someone is watching over your house when you’re unable to. In fact, home insurance providers will give you up to 20% off your premium if you have a monitored alarm system.
Furthermore, home monitoring helps in the most frightening types of home invasions: where you or your family is home. When you hear your alarm triggered and think intruders have entered your house, your first priorities are to get your family to safety and then call the authorities. In the panic of a situation like this though, unless your phone is in your pocket, the odds are high that you won’t have time to find and grab your phone on the way out so you can make that all important phone call. But with professional monitoring, you don’t have to worry about calling the police because they have already been contacted. This frees you up to focus on keeping your family and loved ones safe.
Alarm systems can be considered, in many ways, to be the first smart-home devices, standing robotic guard to protect you and your family. This goes to show how home security can and should be at the center of a connected home. Most burglaries happen fast, and while better than nothing you won’t be fully protected by just a push notification or a siren, the real peace of mind comes from knowing that the authorities were dispatched immediately when they received your alarm’s notification. Professional home alarm monitoring transforms your security system from a household appliance into a real, automated safety device. Scout Alarm’s 24/7 UL-certified monitoring service offers two tiers at either $9.99 or $19.99/month. That’s less than 70¢ a day to protect your home and family around the clock. Even a burglar might say ‘it’s a steal.’
