When the security system at Renee Stith's Magna home sent in its seventh false alarm this summer, triggering yet another $50 penalty from the police department, she called her local service provider, Pro Alert, formerly Wasatch Security.
Stith had decided the motion sensor on her system was too sensitive and wanted someone to come out and fix it."It goes off for no reason at all," she told the Deseret News, adding that even the air from her furnace or moving the leaves on a plant can set it off. Alarms equipped with motion detectors can be tripped by pets, balloons, ceiling fans . . . anything that moves.
But her calls to Pro Alert over the course of three months were met only with promises of repairmen who never showed up and employees who were rude when she called back to complain.
"They gave me the runaround," she said. "When I told them I wanted nothing more to do with their company and I was shutting their system down, they told me I had signed a three-year contract and there was nothing I could do about it. I'm paying $29.95 a month, and I'm not getting anything for it."
That doesn't surprise Shanna Werner, alarms coordinator for the Salt Lake City Police Department, or Sgt. Larry Maxwell of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, who contend that complaints about alarm companies from local residents are exceeded only by those of patrol officers who must respond to alarms that are almost always false.
It is an accepted fact in law enforcement that 98 percent of all alarms, where police response is requested, are false.
For example, last year, the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office received 15,780 alarm "drops." Of those, 4,223 were canceled before a deputy arrived after verification by the alarm company. Another 11,443 were determined to be false by "reasonable on-site investigation" (consuming 8,700 total deputy hours). Only 114 were determined to be valid alarms due to criminal activity, which is less than 1 percent (0.722 percent).
Salt Lake City cites similar figures. Its police department had 8,200 alarms last year and expects that number to increase by 1,200 in 1999. The number of "real" alarms will, as usual, be statistically insignificant.
But that hasn't put a damper on the alarm industry, which has been growing rapidly in recent years, with many companies using aggressive sales tactics that often lead to "buyer's remorse" such as that experienced by Renee Stith.
Conversely, the alarm companies think they're getting a bad rap. When contacted by the Deseret News, Pro Alert co-owner Matt Willis said a multi-year contract is the only way a company can recoup the costs of installing an alarm system.
Like Pro Alert, most alarm companies (there are 28 offering local service) install the hardware for free, counting on the monthly fees (guaranteed by contract) to make back their costs and generate a profit.
Only minutes after being contacted by the Deseret News, Willis was on the phone to Stith and told her a service technician would come to her home this week to remove her motion detector and replace it with window detectors. He would also have a check for six months' worth of monitoring payments to compensate her for when the system wasn't working.
"Our policy is to make the customer happy; that's our No. 1 priority," said Willis.
Stith said she was pleased at finally getting action but said she would take a "wait-and-see" approach before deciding to change her opinion of the company.
Ironically, Pro Alert is among the higher-rated companies by the Salt Lake City Police Department. On a scale of AA, A, B and C (with AA being the best and C the worst), Pro Alert is rated A.
Pro Alert's Willis contends that false alarms can be drastically reduced if people will install a two-way voice monitoring system by which the alarm company can actually listen in to what is going on in the house before calling the police or even route the sounds coming from the home right to the police car. Pro Alert charges an extra $10 a month for that service.
False alarms can also be reduced, he said, by educating everyone in the household on the system's requirements. But he concedes that some households just can't live with an alarm system.
"An alarm system is not for everyone," said Willis. "Some people are even incapable of programming a VCR."
Maybe so, but Werner and Maxwell put most of the blame for the problem on the alarm companies, not their customers. Werner gets particularly worked up when companies use scare tactics to pressure people into buying a system.
She says one man was told that his daughters would be abducted when they let out the family cat at night if they didn't have a system, and an 88-year-old woman was frightened into having the monthly alarm payment deducted from her checking account the moment her Social Security payment was deposited.
"The alarm industry has given itself a poor reputation by trying to bully, threaten, scare and make the customer feel guilty," said Werner.
Some companies will simply lie to potential customers, she said, telling them that the police will respond to an alarm within 25 seconds, an absurd claim that would require an officer to be virtually in the home's driveway when the alarm goes off.
She refers such claims to the Utah Attorney General's Office for false advertising.
Werner goes so far as to say that she would never install an alarm system in her own home, contending that "you're better off with a big dog with large teeth."
Maxwell won't go that far, noting that he "doesn't like big dogs." But he, too, says he would never buy an alarm system even though he thinks it might be a deterrent to some burglars.
"They will at least think twice when they see the (alarm company) sign in a front yard, but there's no guarantee it will keep them out."
The city police department and county sheriff's office have two pamphlets available for consumers who have or are thinking about installing an alarm system. Both are available at no charge. The pamphlets are titled "My Alarm Company Won't Help! What Can I Do?" and "Alarm Systems -- What you should know before you sign the contract."
If you live in the city, call 1-801-799-3113. If you live in the county, call 1-801-535-5819.