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COMMENT ON VERIFIED ALARMS FROM MAY 28, 2015
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Ken:
    I would like to clarify/respond to your May 26 email newsletter which featured discussion about ECV and verified alarms. You provided in that article a link to a video scribe about verified alarm statistics based on my company’s results. You equated ECV with Verified alarms, however, when I refer to Verified alarms I was not including ECV. A proper definition for a verified alarm is one that the Texas police chiefs recently adopted and promoted by PPVAR:
    “A Verified Alarm shall be defined as an electronic security system event in which a trained central station operator using a standardized protocol has determined the presence of humans and the high probability of an in-progress criminal offense.”
    ECV is verification in name alone. When and if a CSO contacts the user and they are not present at the premises – they often know nothing more than the operator, and unfortunately, ECV contributes to real alarms not being dispatched. Statistically, even if 1/2 of false alarms are eliminated with ECV and you didn’t err on cancelling a real alarm – if the false alarm rate without ECV is at 99% you only reduce the false alarm rate to 98% with ECV.
    I know of only two technologies that meet the criteria of verified alarms – audio and video verification. These technologies can give the orders of magnitude (~1000x) improvement compared to unverified alarms including alarms that use ECV.
Robert Baxter, P.Eng.
President/CEO
22131 Fraserwood Way, Richmond
B.C. V6W 1J5 CANADA
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COMMENTS ON LIMITATION OF LIABILITY ARTICLE FROM MAY 25, 2015
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Ken & Jesse,
    ANON from Michigan should stop playing attorney or Claims Manager and do (but not limited to) the following,

  •     Notify your insurance carrier.
  •     Gather up all of your contracts, documents, service tickets, plans, notes and others contracts such as the central station you use and preserve them all. Scan and make copies to put in one place and put the originals back in a place where you wont forget where they are, like the customers folder 
  •     Go to the location and gather as much information you can as to what occurred. Maybe the phone lines where cut? Did you offer a radio transmitter? If they refused did you get the refusal in writing?
  •     Be cooperative and helpful to your customer.
  •     Do not be chatty, you have two ears and one mouth, listen twice as much as you speak. 
  •     Create a report in your own words as to what you saw, heard and discovered in your opinion.     Don't scribble, write so you can read it again in six months. If your customer said something that is of interest, good or bad for you, write it down for your attorney, once you send it, it is protected material. It is not protected if you send it to the claims manager who you should verbally discuss it with so the claims manager can hire the appropriate representation.
  •     Do not make any offers to settle or compensate for the loss. If you do a repair, make an invoice and send it. 
  •     Do not offer to add protection for free unless it is part of a settlement that is approved by your insurance carrier and properly documented.

    Finally, if you are NOW worried about your contract language, ITS TO LATE.
Just last week I heard a similar story from a SARRG insured. I reviewed the contract and found 9 deficiencies. Still it was something I could work with but it was not the best in terms for the alarm company.
    If you are a SARRG insured or want to be, send me your contract forms for a free review.
    BTW, nice job Jesse, good reply, good research but it was just missing your uncles attitude, LOL
Bart A. Didden, Executive Claims Manager
Security America Risk Retention Group - SARRG
Security America Risk Purchasing Group LLC - SARPG
877-872-1266
bdidden@securityamericarrg.com
www.securityamericarrg.com
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Ken
    Question for ANON in Michigan on being sued for not receiving or sending PD or rep. Does the customer test system frequently, does the system provide any test signals, was it on the phone line or some type of wireless or internet transmission. We send in all of our mailing’s whether it be invoicing, news letter how important it is to test the system. Along we have every system send some type of periodic test for both the wireless (AES or GSM) and panel to ensure we get a test signal. If we don’t we then notify immediately the customer of the L-T-T and need them to test it now or if they like we will do a service call. By doing all of this it helps when the customer gets numerous bills & calls regarding late payment and then they say well we canceled our service do to we canceled our phone line or we trip the system and no one called to inquire. We are then able to look at there activity and tell them how funny that is because we are getting our test or most of our commercial accounts we program them for open/close signals even though they don’t pay anything for logging them.
    By doing this we are then able to talk them into how important it is to have these and then we send them a report showing all of the openings / closings. Just another way of collecting re-occurring revenue. Is that one of the items we do to increase our profits.
Normk