Protection One can suck my balls.
 

I received a call at 3:34 today from Protection One informing me that a garage sensor had gone off and my alarm was sounding. Nobody was home and I was 10 to 15 minutes away. They asked if I wanted the police dispatched and I said yes. Told them I was on my way and would be there in roughly 10 minutes.

I got home expecting to have cops waiting for me but there were none to be found. I called Protection One back and asked where the police were. THEN they tell me that there is not enough crime in my area for police to respond to alarm calls. WTF? Then they tell me that because of this, they have contracted with a Rent-A-Cop company who has sent a patrol officer. OK, so where is he at? They give me the toll free number for the RAC's. I call them and am put on hold before I can say hello. I waited for 2 minutes, hung up, and called back. Was put on hold for 3 minutes. Hung up, called back...."We're sorry but your call can not be completed at this time" Got that 3 more times. Called back one more time: "Hello, can you hold please?" No, I can't. May I please speak with the company owner? They tell me to hold anyway and away they went.

Dude answers the phone says hes the manager and asks how I can help HIM. I say it's been over half an hour since my alarm company dispatched you. Where is your officer? They tell me they are not sure where he is. He may be stuck in traffic, delayed from weather etc... Then he says "I can't answer your other questions." What other questions? I only asked one.

Anyway, moving on with the story....

3:34pm Protection One calls me.
3:50pm I call Protection One.
4:05pm I finally get through to the rent a cops who tell me officer is on his way.


5:14pm rent a cop rolls in. Almost 2 hours after the alarm. WTF?

I asked the rent a cop what time he was dispatched. He tells me 4:47pm. They didn't even dispatch him until well over an hour AFTER the alarm went off!

WTF am I paying these assholes for?

I've got a signed copy of the rent a cops report with the dispatch and arrival times and will be filing complaints with anybody and everybody I can tomorrow. This is bullshit.

To protect and serve? Not enough crime to send a cop? Interesting.

Fucking lazy in Canada man! :1orglaugh

Seriously some of the emails i send to clients here don't get back to me for weeks!

Pisses me off big time.

wow, that is beyond insane but I gotta know.... was the garage ok? false alarm?? Did someone break in or attempt to??

:eek7 :eek7

Here's the thing....

I had been out shooting 2 days ago. I had a card table set up in my garage, less than 2 feet from the roll up door, where I was cleaning the guns. I had not finished the job yet so they were still sitting out. My bad. :(

So, I'm freaking out that somebody has opened my garage door.

A: Did they steal my shit?

B: When I get there, how many cops will be standing around looking at a table full of hardware?

Anyway, turns out it was the door between the garage and the house. It had not been latched fully and a little change of air pressure caused it to pop open.

That door is on a separate zone than the roll up doors. I wish I would have asked for clarification of which door was opened. The thing is, what if this was a real break in?

Guns are locked up now...I'll finish cleaning them one at a time.

Wow. Had this been a real emergency, I can see that things would have been taken care of nicely!

I'm serious! the response i get from people over here is terrible.

Models, Clients, anything business related in general no matter what it is. the response times and waiting around is terrible.

low crime = cops are bored = they should have checked it out just for fun....

I'm sitting here trying to think of what the crime rate has to do with anything. If the crime rate is low, odds are you have a decent value house and pay a decent amount of property taxes. There should be police available to investigate your situation. In a high crime area, I would think that there would be less police available which would make the rent a cop situation more plausible.

I had a stop and take a shit man, was hurting up in my bowels, didn't realize it would piss you off so much

Thats BS that they didn't dispatch police. You wanted police and asked for it and apparently they had no intent on actually sending police? I'd call them out on that outright lie. Rent a cops are useless, they show up whenever they want. They're just there for insurance purposes as a low cost alternative to cops. If they arrive to a burglary, what is he gonna do? Most of them arent even armed.
WG

stfu, you know damn well you a broke ass surfer.

That's funny ironic shit! A gun nut goes out shooting and makes it so his garage does not close properly then has a tiddy attack because cops/security cant show up timely and save him from the big bad alert. Why not whip out your .45 sidearm and put a few slugs in the garage to make sure no bad guys are around? Emotion and logic never go hand in hand. Perhaps owning weapons yet needing "security" from others looks a bit stupid and contradictory to you now? :error

As a responsible gun owner you think the right thing for me to do is shoot random holes in my garage?

And you think I'm the nut job? :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

And since when does owning a weapon have anything to do with people jacking your shit while you are away?

You are appropriately named foolio.

That's what you get for $9.99 protection. It's in the fine print somewhere...

I need to move to a different trailer park.

Should file a complaint with your PD about not having enough crime.

Should also tell them so in case you truly need them next time, you'll proceed to hire criminals to raise the crime rate in your area, just so if the time you truly need them, they will come right away instead of blowing you off.

:1orglaugh

pop off a couple shots and you'll get a response ;)

ADT is pretty good .

Maybe it's good the police didn't show up.

They would'nt have been happy being called to a false alarm and finding your guns out in an unlocked garage.

same thing you're paying your taxes and car insurance for...
a false sense of security.

:1orglaugh:thumbsup

i keep mine next to the bed.

just got a new one. I pity the fool that gets past the ADT

http://www.fuckyoumang.com/batman-squirtgun.jpg

Who are you kidding... double wides dont have garages...

I call shinanigans :mad:

That's a great news story and embarrassing for your local police department to refuse to respond.

The one thing to check on your part (we have to do it here in my city) is if you have to file your alarm system with your police department or they don't respond to your alarm company when they call in to them.

What a fucking joke, id be changing security companies quick fucking smart.

He said it was the door between the interior of his home, and the garage. Therefore the garage was not unlocked from the outside. I also have alarm sensors on that same door in my house.

I could be wrong... but I'm not.

:1orglaugh

My father in law bought me a t-shirt, he said when he saw it, he knew it was perfect for me.. it said "I could be wrong, but I doubt it." :thumbsup

If his garage is attached to the house like mine is, It would have a sensor on the door from the garage into the house just as mine does. A sensor on the entrances from the outside to the inside of the garage as well.

My sensors are wired so they can be monitored by the company I pay (ADT) and they can tell me which sensor it was that was set off. And the company should have informed him exactly what sensor had the connection broken.

On a side note... Hi Aaron

Damn! That could have turned out allot worse than it was..... you still have your weapons and photography equipment, so that is a very good thing.
Lucky for you, you were not to far away from home so you could respond to the situation. It's unbelievable that it took that long to get someone out to your house under the circumstances and if it was a break in, they would have been long gone with the goods.

I can't get over the statement "that there is not enough crime in my area for police to respond to alarm calls".....your tax dollars at work :winkwink:
What constitutes a crime?

Glad everything worked out OK :thumbsup

I am trying to find a company in Phoenix, AZ for my house and all these guys are like used car sales guys. They want a 3 year contract signed .

My home was pre-wired for an alarm. It still took them 3 installers and over 8 hours to install. They were not so bad on the initial sales call but when I mentioned video surveillance, they started in like the car salesmen you mentioned.

Yes, I had to sign a 3 year contract too. On top of that I paid around $1300.00 for all the shit they put in here just for the alarm. And for what?

I'm patiently waiting for their local office to open so I can discuss how long they will be sucking my balls for.

That is exactly what I was going to suggest. You should also find a black friend and move him into the neighborhood, and buy him a Caprice on 22s. Then every time you call the cops cite him as the reason. They will be there in 9 minutes even if it's a 27 minute drive.

when our alarm goes off cops are here pretty quick. Somehow it went off once on accident when we first got it (I forget what happened, our mistake I think), the cops were here right away.

and the cops around here are way questionable, but I guess they like the thrill of catching a break in. :1orglaugh

So....6 months credit to my account plus they have put me on a "VIP" list(whatever the hell that means). The owner of the rent a cop company also called me from and told me he would be investigating the situation and that if in fact I was lied to by his manager, the manager would be fired. He claimed he would listen to the call recordings and compare those times with the rent a cops log and report sheets.

Could all be lip service though....I guess we'll find out the next time something happens.

Id be looking for a new alarm company if i was you

Just call back next week and ask for the manager who jerked you around by name. Then you'll know. :)

Another option is tell them that you are going to post your experience on the net on sites like yelp.com ....i pulled this on a company that moved by car and damaged it and got them to get their insurance company to pay for the paint job.