When I go into a house, one of the first things I do, after I’ve looked around at doors and windows, is I tell the customer that we want to set up a restaurant menu for them. If you went to dinner tonight, before you decided what to eat, you would look at the menu and decide if you want a salad or a steak or dessert, whatever it may be. What fits your budget and what you have a craving for. Everyone is different, some people want Fort Knox and some people want just enough to get them by, but I’ve always believed in making them a menu and letting them decide on what fits their budget and what they feel comfortable sleeping and leaving the house with.
To do that I set up many years ago a menu that is called Good, Better, or Best. For a Good system you need: a control panel, a keypad to turn the system on and off, a backup battery in case you lose power, a siren to make lots of noise to scare the burglar away, all your doors would be protected since that’s where 9 out of 10 burglars come in, and a motion detector somewhere in a good spot. That is a basic Good system and for some that is all they can afford and they are glad to have it. Remember, with signs and stickers from the outside the burglar doesn’t know what you have. However, some people want more.
Folks who want more move up to the next package. A Good system is basic, but Better protects all of your windows. There are two ways to protect windows. One way is to contact the windows, if someone raises the window the alarm will go off, we use this about 20% of the time or less because this is pretty much where customers are trying to keep teenagers from slipping out more than keeping burglars from coming in. It can also be used because of the type of window you have in your home. 80% of the time we put in glass breakage detectors, it’s a micro-processor device that mounts in the ceiling that is listening for the actual sound of glass breaking. When someone breaks the glass, whether you have that window locked, they are going to do one of two things, they will either break the glass and shimmy right on through or they are going to break the glass, unlock the window, and raise it but either way they have to break the glass which makes the glass breakage detector more effective.
And finally is Best. Best is if you want a fire alarm that would call the fire department. Everyone has electrician smoke detectors that buzz, but our smoke detectors not only set off your siren but also call the fire department. That is the third part of the Good, Better, Best pricing menu. Most importantly, you get that peace of mind with a fire alarm system that it will call the fire department.
That is basically a Good, Better, Best quote that we offer every day on our security systems. Honeywell is our partner of choice because we think they make the best security equipment there is. Whether it is hard wired or wireless, we have all the equipment we need to protect a home, and we have been doing it since 1987.