For Home Security Systems, go to this thread.
Increased price for NextAlarm, current pricing (2/2008):
- Basic Monthly - $14.95 per month
- 2 Years' Service pre-paid for $286.80 (equal to $11.95/mo), plus 1 free month
- 3 Years' Service pre-paid for $430.20 (equal to $11.95/mo), plus 2 free months
- 1 Year Service pre-paid for $143.40 (equal to $11.95/mo)
UPDATE - the price runup continues ********************************************
Billing Plans: New pricing as of May 11, 2008
[daBomb says: My pre-existing 1 Year Pre-Pay Account was still $11.95/mo as of 6/2/08.]
NextAlarm.com monitoring service is available under two low-cost billing plans.
Pay $17.95 per month, on the 3rd month anniversary of the day we started monitoring your system.
Even more economical is prepaying for one, two, or three years at $179.40 per year. This works out to just $14.95 per month.
Monitoring of a cellular backup unit such as an Uplink dialer costs an additional $7.50 per month, regardless of your billing plan. Monitoring over broadband using an ABN adapter costs an additional $5 per month, regardless of your billing plan.
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I highly recommend the Visonic PowerMax Plus Home Security System Control Kit - PowerMax wireless alarm system, which can be used with an alarm service and/or private numbers. Two good places to purchase from are Smarthome and Safe-Mart. Safe-Mart has better prices on the equipment/kits, for example Visonic PowerMax® Plus Home Security System Control Kit - PowerMax®
If you have an ADT alarm and the installer code has been changed from the default, try 6321 which seems to be pretty standard. On my DSC Power632 system, you can test the install code using *8 install code, if it works you'll see "Program" in the window, otherwise, you'll hear a long beep after entering a wrong installer code.
Lots of info here: link
Okay just a note for who wants to change monitoring... I say just do it...
I used to work in ADT for years, they paid us very well. The monitoring centers are the same like many other monitoring center. The size does not matter because everything is computerized and handled with large customer service.
When I worked in ADT I found out that the cost to monitor each client's home is less than $3 so if you're paying $30/month, they are robbing you blind.
When I was still with them I only paid $7/month. After I quit ADT, I quickly changed to AA company to monitor my alarm for $12.95/month.
Don't fall for their marketing scheme, everthing is the same!
The difference is only in your system, some systems are using dial ups and some system using wireless.
Dial ups are easy to disable, cut the phone line and you left out with nothing.
ADT will often say, it's better to protect your phone box, dial ups take about 30 seconds to dial out, if the burglars manage to cut your phone line in less than 30 seconds you're out of luck.
So take care, I hope it will answer some people's question regarding the monitoring.
[daBomb says: Message previously edited by: Dealhunter101 on 2008-05-29 08:25:15 CDT]
At the bottom of the first post by jjct1 is a quote from NextAlarm saying their central monitoring stations are UL listed - that feature is important as most insurance companies want an alarm system to be UL listed. I found out (the hard way) that although that statement is true - Nextalarm did not mention that when your alarm signal is sent via their ABN adaptor through the Internet - it travels through Nextalarm computer systems that are NOT UL listed before being forwarded to the UL listed central monitoring stations. What this means is if there is a delay in signal processing in the Nextalarm computer systems then that signal will not get through to the UL listed stations 'instantly' which is what you would expect.
You can test for this delay (which has happened intermittently) by setting the Nextalarm site so it 'polls' (Ping) your ABN adaptor every 10 minutes and reports on the log if it cannot reach the ABN adaptor. This will prove that your Internet connection is working properly.
When you test your alarm system be sure to check your NextAlarm log to verify that your test appears on the log at the same time you did the test. Meaning if you test a door contact or motion sensor by tripping it at 7:30 PM then your NextAlarm log should show the event at 7:30 PM. If instead it shows up at something like 7:50 PM - then you have just experienced an ABN delay as the signal would not have been sent to the monitoring centre until 7:50 PM - not at 7:30 PM when it actually happened.
The other method to automatically look for this delay is to set your alarm panel for a 'periodic test report' to be sent once a day to NextAlarm. This is a signal sent from your alarm panel to NextAlarm each day. After setting it - watch your daily NextAlarm log - the periodic test report should be appearing on the Nextalarm log each day at the same time plus or minus 2 minutes. If it comes in much later as in 30 minutes later - then you have just experienced a significant delay in NextAlarm's processing of your signal and if there is no mention in your log that your Internet signal was down then Nextalarm cannot tell you that the reason for the delay was the Internet. At that point notify Nextalarm of the issue - in writing - and please post back here.
*** See this thread on how careh uses two wireless alarm panels for redundancy - one panel sending via ABN (or this could also be a VOIP line or a land line), the other panel sending via a cellular dialer (in this case cellular without the 'uplink/anynet' additional monthly fee).
