Vent: Found out 3 out of 5 false alarms come from user error, not equipment

I was digging through some old industry reports last night from the Security Industry Association. One stat jumped out at me. Nearly 60% of false alarm calls trace back to customers doing dumb stuff. Hitting panic buttons by accident. Forgetting their code and letting the timer expire. Leaving windows cracked and expecting sensors to work. I tracked it all week on my installs in Phoenix. Three homes had repeat false alarms. All three were user mistakes, not my wiring. One guy set off his glass break sensor by dropping a metal pan at 3 AM. Another lady let her kid play with the keypad. It makes me rethink how I do my walkthrough training. Do you guys spend extra time drilling the basics into customers? Or do you just let the manual do the talking?

2 comments

2 Comments

caseyfox9d agoMost Upvoted

Is it really that big of a deal though? I mean yeah user error happens but like, most false alarms are just a nuisance. Cops show up, nothing's wrong, they leave. Big whoop. The industry loves to hype up the false alarm problem so they can sell you a monitoring upgrade or some fancy keypad with more features you'll ignore. I'm guilty of it myself. Customers are gonna do stupid stuff no matter how much you drill them. You can't fix stupid. Save your breath and just move on to the next install.

gray_smith679d ago

Honestly, I gotta push back on that "big whoop" part. Where I work, the cops have started charging the homeowner a fee after the third false alarm in a year, and it's not cheap. Plus, in some towns they straight up stop responding to your alarm if you cry wolf too many times. So yeah, user error is annoying, but when a customer gets slapped with a $200 fine or the police ignore their real break-in because of previous false alarms, suddenly it's a huge deal and they're screaming at you on the phone.