Disarm System Now! - the house alarm POLL

rented apt has an alarm system (very loud)

Don't understand the point of alarm systems. Do they really do anything except annoy your neighbours?

they notify the police if someone has broken into your house while you are not there.

They also notify the police if they are set too sensitively and the dog gets out while you are not there.

... your neighbours or your alarm system?

We had a few false alarms last month, thanks to our new puppy and his ability to leap out of dog enclosures.

In my last apartment, I was pretty nervous about break-ins, because there had been a few in our complex. I devised a security system that consisted of putting lots of cactus plants underneath all of the windows. Dunno how well that would've worked.

They notify your dog if you are not there.

haha kate i can't understand if you're just defaulting to challenging opinions mode or if you're actually that dismissive of people's home security concerns

i live on a first floor apartment and i'm extremely grateful to have an alarm system. when i first moved in, i set the alarm off when trying to arm the system. police were there in 5 mins. "peace of mind" is a useful phrase here, even though i understand that an alarm system doesn't actually "keep me safe"

My wife set off her parents' police-monitored alarm system once while collecting some stuff from their house while they were away. 30 minutes later the police turn up and ask who she is. She says she's the home-owners' daughter. The police ask for no ID, just say, "Cool!" and leave.

Not all home alarm systems have back to base, some just set of an irritating klaxon, and I can see where Kate is coming from - people just ignore them.

We have one in our rented place, but we dont use it, I hate the fuckers.

set off, rather.

Is anyone else a fan of the commercials from Brinks where burglars come in through the most obvious entrance and parents gather everyone in the bedroom like it's a panic room until a kind man from Brinks calls to calm them?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMpKDZDjBWM

i think they are annoying but at least they make some kind of sense unlike car alarms which are pointless and make everyone hate you and shouldn't even be legal

Oh fer sure. They're at least a deterrent, I'd like to think.

Interested in this poll, as we don't have one, but an acquaintance's campaigning about how everyone should have one, how can you feel safe etc has been getting to me a bit. I'd be worried it'd go off when I wasn't around to turn it off for several hours and make everyone hate me though.

I was shopping around for home contents insurance recently and nobody asked if I had an alarm, so it seems it wouldn't have decreased my premium or anything.

my neighbours' old alarm system got accidentally set off last year and it turned out it didn't notify the police - instead the alarm company rang them on their mobiles. which is just-- what would it do if they were away?

(they have a new alarm system now obv)

The extremely loud "klaxon" ones are awful. I accidentally set one off at a friend's house when I was in high school and he said he could hear from where he was, half a mile away. For about 30 seconds when I first walked in the house, I just thought Rob was watching the end of Aliens very loudly - "You have four minutes to reach minimum safe distance" and all that...

Ours has a series of beeps that are loud enough to hear throughout the house, but there's no way our neighbors can here them. That lasts for a minute or two, then the alarm people actually listen to what's going on in the house (it's connected through our phone line).

hear, obv.

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Yeah see a system where people get filmed and the cops/security get called makes more sense. You have immediate evidence of a breakin, and people are on their way. Expensive though, I imagine.

I don't have one, but have been thinking about it. It would need to be one that alerted the police though, otherwise I think they're useless, as no-one gives a shit about you being broken into, only about being pissed off by the noise.

I haven't looked into how much such things cost nowadays though.

Oh, and one that did do the whole end of Aliens spiel would be absolutely amazing. I'd totally spring for that. If I could get flashing lights strewn around the ceilings of my flat and spurting gas jets, then even better!

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