Burglar alarms - useful, or a complete ****ing nuisance?

Burglar alarms - useful, or a complete ****ing nuisance?

Author
Discussion

The Moose

22,818 posts

208 months

Wednesday 3rd July 2013
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You say alarm system that notifies a monitoring centre is the preserve of the commercial clients and wealthy residents, however it's not exactly hard now to have an alarm with a speech dialer that calls your mobile and a CCTV system that can be remotely accessed from same smart phone. No need for external monitoring companies really.

Mastodon2

Original Poster:

13,818 posts

164 months

Wednesday 3rd July 2013
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If you're on a beach in the Maldives and someone breaks into your house, I doubt you'll be 4G'ing a connection to your CCTV and then placing an international call to your local police to sort the matter. In that situation, a fancy security system linked to your phone would, at best, let you watch grainy, stuttery images of people carting your gear out the door. Unless of course, you had a direct alarm set up with the police.

Chrisgr31

13,426 posts

254 months

Wednesday 3rd July 2013
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My parents alarm goes off occasionally and the neighbours invariably come round o check its all ok. They also have a bedsit over the garage which is let out, but not included in the alarm circuit.

One particular evening the alarm went off, the tenants boyfriend was visiting and he came down to check the house, and a neighbour came over too. They had keys to the house so let themselves in and silenced the alarm.

Then coudnt find the dogs so out in to the garden they go wandering around looking for the dogs. At which point the police turned up to ask them "Do you live here?" to receive the reply "No" from both! Once resolved the neighbours and police set about looking for the dogs, only to eventually find them asleep in their beds!


Bibbs

3,733 posts

209 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Mastodon2 said:
If you're on a beach in the Maldives and someone breaks into your house, I doubt you'll be 4G'ing a connection to your CCTV and then placing an international call to your local police to sort the matter. In that situation, a fancy security system linked to your phone would, at best, let you watch grainy, stuttery images of people carting your gear out the door. Unless of course, you had a direct alarm set up with the police.
Why not? I had my alarm go off while 45mins away, at a friends house.

It called me, I dialed into my CCTV, saw it was a false alarm, deactivated it via my phone and then re-armed it.

Would I want the Police to come out for a false alarm? No.

If anything was to happen, I'd call the police/the security company and tell them. I'd also have the CCTV footage available.

Westy Pre-Lit

5,087 posts

202 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Mastodon2 said:
If you're on a beach in the Maldives and someone breaks into your house, I doubt you'll be 4G'ing a connection to your CCTV and then placing an international call to your local police to sort the matter. In that situation, a fancy security system linked to your phone would, at best, let you watch grainy, stuttery images of people carting your gear out the door. Unless of course, you had a direct alarm set up with the police.
Which is why you have keyholders that can attend the property if your away.

On a speech dialer or monitored system you can easily change to temporary keyholder numbers of those that can quickly attend your property.

Westy Pre-Lit

5,087 posts

202 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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djglover said:
Same here, new build house came with one, never set it. I asked the neighbour to keep an eye on the house rather than set it an annoy them at 4:30 am when the wind set it off or some such...
The wind won't set off an alarm system unless windows are left open in a protected area or the tamper switch on the bell has gone faulty which is a very rare occurrence and usually found on poorly maintained systems. Last time I had to change a switch was about 2 years ago.....saying that will probably get an influx now hehe

littlebasher

3,764 posts

170 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Westy Pre-Lit said:
Alarm goes off for 28 minutes every day for 10 years and you said nothing or tried to do anything about it......really ?
Tried, got nowhere with homeowner or council

Thing is, once the alarms in those houses went off, they wouldn't go off again until reset. Made the alarm pretty pointless, but do you think he would listen.

BrettMRC

4,009 posts

159 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Mastodon2 said:
Tried ringing the local nick - I'd bet the bobbies down there in a quiet rural town have turned off a few house alarms in their time, no answer at the front desk. Didn't think it was worth ringing 999 or 101 until I'd tried the door. However, I had my concerns about going on my own, I'm not particularly powerfully built, but I'd understand old folks having reservations about opening their front door at half 10 at night.

However, when I noticed her blinds were open I thought something might be amiss, so I went down and got her neighbour, who is an old bloke himself, and knocked on her door. Turns out the old dear was sitting watching the F1 and didn't even realise it was going off, while everyone else was probably bleeding out of their ears. The code was not working consistently, though I did manage briefly to silence it, before she set it off again by going to check another alarm panel in the house. At this point, I considered shutting it up and gaffer taping the sensors so she couldn't set it off again, but she phoned her daughter and son-in-law to come round. She was keen to cut the wires, but I suspected there'd be a battery backup that would put the unit into a permanent alarm until the batteries ran out (turns out there was, according to google, so I'm glad we didn't do that). However, after consulting the manual for the thing and looking at a wiring diagram, we did manage to disconnect the mains and hopefully quiet the beast forever. Turns out she had set it off 10 years ago and couldn't stop it, so never bothered setting it, and it was alarming tonight due to a fault or a battery on it's way out.

While I agree that monitoring client based alarms, or alarms which alert you by phone immediately, rather than wailing on in the street. The Apprentice was also really good, I'll be catching up on the last 20 minutes shortly.

45 minute job, was offered a chocolate cake but politely declined. The pays not that bad being an on-call alarm deactivator I suppose.
You did the right thing smile

Was it a decent looking chocolate cake?

Adrian W

13,830 posts

227 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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I chose not to have monitoring as the police don't guarantee to attend and Essex have a policy of two false alarms for any reason and the will not attend.

If my alarm goes off, after 30 seconds it phones me, If I don't cancel it with a code, it then calls my neighbors who can check or call the police, who then have to attend. we have a reciprocal arraignment with them.


anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Sounds like many of the anti-alarm brigade don't actually understand how they work.

Most pukka systems will be set so that if one zone is set off then the monitoring station will call you, but they won't ring the police, this stops a fault from becoming a police hassle. If two zones are set off (which is what would likely happen if somebody was actually in the house) then it will ring you and also alert the police.

We've only ever had one false alarm, which was when a shiny helium balloon from my daughters birthday floated in front of the PIR sensor.

We live on an estate with a lot of houses all clustered quite close together, and i can only remember a neighbours alarm going off in the night once since we moved there.

Personally I think that anything that reduces the chances of your house being the one the burglars pick is worth doing, the thought of somebody burgling my house makes me sick, I don't care about them stealing TVs, bikes or whatever, more bothered about them taking/damaging prized personal possessions and simply the fact that our private space has been breached.

stanwan

1,890 posts

225 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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I used to live in a ground floor flat in Greenwich. We had a break in, but fortunately had an alarm. It appears that they only managed to grab a few items before doing a runner.

Without the alarm, they would have spent more time picking through. An alarm creates attention and also causes confusion - I would have one again.

The Moose

22,818 posts

208 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Adrian W said:
I chose not to have monitoring as the police don't guarantee to attend and Essex have a policy of two false alarms for any reason and the will not attend.

If my alarm goes off, after 30 seconds it phones me, If I don't cancel it with a code, it then calls my neighbors who can check or call the police, who then have to attend. we have a reciprocal arraignment with them.
Reciprocal arrangement with the police?! wink

MX7

7,902 posts

173 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Inkyfingers said:
Most pukka systems
I think the problem is that most are not 'pukka' systems. They are often decades old, and probably not serviced regularly.

I'm not sure there's an "anti-alarm brigade"! I think it's just that some people find repeated alarms to be quite annoying. Alarmophobic?!

Craikeybaby

10,367 posts

224 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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We've only had one false alarm on ours, unfortunately it was before we were moved in, so we were living 30 mins away. The neighbours called us and we had to trek over to check it out, but couldn't see anything (it was the upstairs landing sensor that triggered) but it has been fine since.

However, I wish we'd had an alarm on our garage when someone broke in the other week - luckily our neighbour was up at 4am, heard them and managed to scare them off.

If an alarm goes off in my steet I'll check, because I'd like to think my neighbours would do the same.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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MX7 said:
I think the problem is that most are not 'pukka' systems. They are often decades old, and probably not serviced regularly.

I'm not sure there's an "anti-alarm brigade"! I think it's just that some people find repeated alarms to be quite annoying. Alarmophobic?!
Ha Ha, fair point, guess we've just been lucky not to live near any repeat offenders.

Overall I still think they are a good idea, though admit they are not perfect.

Perd Hapley

1,750 posts

172 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Blue Oval84 said:
When I was a kid my folks always used to set the alarm, even at night when we went to bed.
I'm always surprised at how many people don't set their alarm when they go to bed. To me, this is the main benefit of the thing. I like knowing I'll be woken up if any of the doors are opened, or if someone is walking about downstairs.

Craikeybaby

10,367 posts

224 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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We don't set ours at night, but I imagine that in the morning half asleep I'd forget to deactivate it.

One other bonus of having an alarm is that the MIL isn't constantly checking up on the house (we bought the house from her father when he passed).

Podie

46,630 posts

274 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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We had an attempted break in years ago, and after that had a decent alarm fitted (NACOSS Gold / NSI Gold). We've had one false activation in that time (something fell over in a room) and the neighbours were round the place pretty quickly checking someone wasn't in the place.

We're about to move and one of the first things we'll be doing is having an alarm fitted. If it offers any deterrent, it's worth it IMO. If there is a choice of a house with an alarm or one without, I imagine the chance burglar will go for the one without the alarm.

motco

15,908 posts

245 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Probably the most important component of a domestic alarm system is a prominent outside warning device (bell box) and, most importantly, a recognised installer's name on it. I believe that an intruder is motivated by greed when he/she 'cases' the area, but is motivated by caution when the particular house is chosen for the break in. Most roads have houses of similar value and, therefore, occupants of similar income levels. It follows that the contents of those houses will very likely be similar in value and nature. So, as others have already said, the house is chosen as the lowest risk to the intruder and any with a well-known alarm unit on the front will be low on the choice list. Few break-ins are to targeted houses for particular items of value, and the best you can do is reduce the likelihood of being broken into. Just my opinion... I am not a burglar! biggrin

JDFR

1,219 posts

134 months

Thursday 4th July 2013
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Craikeybaby said:
We don't set ours at night, but I imagine that in the morning half asleep I'd forget to deactivate it.
When we redid the house, we alarmed all the downstairs windows and doors. This means we can set the outside of the house at night but still be able to walk around inside.