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Considering Phonewatch

Ronan H

As above, they have a half price deal on their system at present.

However, I see it's only a starter pack type thing which only includes two window/door sensors. Common sense tells me that you need sensors on all windows and doors, which means buying additional sensors, which are 85 euros each.

We have 14 windows that open, I'll let you do the maths. Seems extremely expensive.

Is there anyone here who has the system on a 3 bed semi D who has had the system installed and can share a bit about how the sensor issue was addressed?

The chat lady I spoke to said that the engineer would make it work as best he can and that they have discounts for buying a number of sensors.

I'm still a bit skeptical though.

Thanks for the thoughts.

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Parchment

kub wrote: »

While we will all wonder after the next election how did FF get back in Government after what they did to the country.
People in general are taken by rubbish they hear from advertisements.
I wonder what percentage of those Systems you saw are still being monitored after the misfortunate householders realised what they signed up for and what it costs.
For example just today I spoke with a lady, I will be calling to her soon, I will be moving her monitoring from Phonewatch/ Sector to another professional monitoring station and saving her at least 50% in monitoring fees per year.
So as KoolKid said fools and their money are easily parted.

Many of the boxes were the new black boxes they have at PW - their campaign obviously still works well and people go for a "well known" brand. Im glad i found this forum - lots of helpful info and i can see PW for the money black-hole it is!

kub

Well if an Insurance company says monitored Alarm, it means professionally monitored.

Their reasoning is quite simple and while I have little patience for the way insurance companies are, I respect the logic here.
The logic being is that while it is all well and good having free notifications or whatever to people's mobile phones, it is never a guarantee that the alarm activation will be noticed by the person or people to which the system notifies and secondly an appropriate response by Gardai will not be assured.

kub

Parchment wrote:

Many of the boxes were the new black boxes they have at PW - their campaign obviously still works well and people go for a "well known" brand. Im glad i found this forum - lots of helpful info and i can see PW for the money black-hole it is!

I wonder is that why their boxes are black ðŸ˜†

listermint

caycro wrote: »

My apologies, I meant a monitored system who links you to the gardai ... as the other poster said, I can't imagine the local gardai responding as promptly to my urgent phonecall as they would to an independent monitoring station who has reported a break in at my house or a personal alarm alert.

On another point, my house insurance has a discount for a monitored alarm ... does anybody know does that include self monitored? I can't imagine it does and could lead to headaches if making a claim.

so as stated would you not get a better more comprehensive system including CCTV to IP for the money youd get on one of these nonsense monitored system, And personally i dont see how a phone call from phonewatch versus you calling the guards with a visual confirmation of an intruder would be any different.

my 2 cents either way, personally id go for best bang for my buck.

KoolKid

You phoning the local Garda station saying your alarm has sent you a notification will not get the same response as a licenced monitoring station directly communicating with the Garda control Centre reporting a verified alarm, PA etc quoting the urn issued by the guards.

listermint

KoolKid wrote: »

You phoning the local Garda station saying your alarm has sent you a notification will not get the same response as a licenced monitoring station directly communicating with the Garda control Centre reporting a verified alarm, PA etc quoting the urn issued by the guards.

So you phoning your local. Station saying your house is alarmed and you are looking at cctv of intruders on your property won't get the same response as a lad in a call centre.

Right so. Looks like. You've wrapped that up so.

......
...

kub

listermint wrote:

so as stated would you not get a better more comprehensive system including CCTV to IP for the money youd get on one of these nonsense monitored system, And personally i dont see how a phone call from phonewatch versus you calling the guards with a visual confirmation of an intruder would be any different.

Nonsense monitored Systems.....what a laugh.
You carry on there, this is comedy gold

stuartkee

The reason that there are so many black bell boxes installed is because Phonewatch hired a northern Ireland contract company to install bell boxes not the alarm just the bell box in as many locations as possible even asking none phonewatch customers can they install a box on there house . Here's the problem if you don't have an alarm that makes noise outside and has Doors and window sensors installed it's not an alarm .
The two basics of an alarm should be keep them out and make lots of noise if you're not doing that it's NOT an alarm . Also phonewatch must be the only company in ireland who PLUG there alarm into a socket it's a joke of a system and by all reports not that well made either lots of faulty equipment and lots of false alarms from spiders on the motion detectors. It's like shopping in Brown Thomas's your paying for the bag/bellbox

Parchment

stuartkee wrote: »

The reason that there are so many black bell boxes installed is because Phonewatch hired a northern Ireland contract company to install bell boxes not the alarm just the bell box in as many locations as possible even asking none phonewatch customers can they install a box on there house . Here's the problem if you don't have an alarm that makes noise outside and has Doors and window sensors installed it's not an alarm .
The two basics of an alarm should be keep them out and make lots of noise if you're not doing that it's NOT an alarm . Also phonewatch must be the only company in ireland who PLUG there alarm into a socket it's a joke of a system and by all reports not that well made either lots of faulty equipment and lots of false alarms from spiders on the motion detectors. It's like shopping in Brown Thomas's your paying for the bag/bellbox

I just noted they were the black ones as they are the newer ones. I still saw some of the older Eircom Phonewatch white boxes. My point was that many are signing up still - as they newer boxes were common.

kub

Common practice as well is if they are back to customers doing routine inspections they remove the old white box and replace it with the Black one.

Why any householder accepts such an eye sore of a colour up on their house is beyond me.

listermint

kub wrote: »

Nonsense monitored Systems.....what a laugh.
You carry on there, this is comedy gold

Not really, I presume this place is swarmed with installers for the likes of phonewatch. Of which what it offers is a direct line to someone in a call centre who reacts to alarms that come in.

Acting like its some nouveau 'Nasa'esque monitored solution is gas.

Is it your assertion that People need Phonewatch to properly monitor their property then the jokes on you.

But as i said id imagine its swarmed with installers here so hard to bad mouth the bread and butter i suppose.

Ronan H

Well, that escalated quickly.

Meanwhile, I have been saving myself a fortune by getting my old alarm fixed, for a very reasonable sum, despite the fact that it was written off as goosed by a guy who gave us a quote. Hmm...

Went with Cuala Security in the end. Highly recommended.

Much thanks to kub and KoolKid for their advice and assistance.

Props to you both.

Ro

kub

listermint wrote:

Not really, I presume this place is swarmed with installers for the likes of phonewatch. Of which what it offers is a direct line to someone in a call centre who reacts to alarms that come in.
Acting like its some nouveau 'Nasa'esque monitored solution is gas.
Is it your assertion that People need Phonewatch to properly monitor their property then the jokes on you.
But as i said id imagine its swarmed with installers here so hard to bad mouth the bread and butter i suppose.

First off, in case you have missed the blatant obvious in this particular forum, we all here criticise Phonewatch.

All of us here who give advice on Home Security Systems, know a hell of a lot more about it than what you do and a few of us have been in this business a long long time.
It is experience gathered over these years and having close working relationships with monitoring stations, security consultants and Gardai we know what we are talking about.
We are all also Licensed by The Private Security Authority.

So let us give the advice here, your notions of ringing your local Garda station because you can see some guy through your phone screen in the process of breaking into your home might seem like a great cost saving exercise to you and this whole monitoring thing some kind of a joke.

Well I will let you in on a little secret, if a monitored Alarm system transmits a verified Alarm signal ( I bet you are lost here ) to a monitoring station, it will receive a more rapid Garda response than your call to the local station, assuming the line is not engaged of course or that the station is open or the lads in the patrol car are on their break.

The Gardai have specific Alarm response criteria and I am afraid your solution just does not comply with it.

BlinkingLights

We switched from PhoneWatch to a HKC alarm.
Local installer (quite large though) and we're using a separate monitoring company.

It's like night and day. The company's customer service is phenomenally better. For example we were changing windows and had the installer up to swap sensors that day.

Also the alarm uses the HKC app and also texts us. So you can access the alarm from anywhere and even in bad data coverage e.g. Roaming you'll still get instant SMS notifications.

You can also build out the alarm over time, adding more sensors e.g. Smokes and heat etc as you feel like it.

You can also add outputs for home automation - lights etc even heating afaik.

The installation quality was better than PW and the system is as intuitive to use and provides voice feedback much like PW.

I interact with it almost totally through the app.

You own the alarm and you can decide what you want to do : monitor with any number of centers, self monitor, add to it, move it etc ... total flexibility

Also HKC is an Irish electronics company. So you've great local tech support and it's built for Irish style houses and you're supporting an indigenous industry!

kub

BlinkingLights wrote: »

We switched from PhoneWatch to a HKC alarm.
Local installer (quite large though) and we're using a separate monitoring company.

It's like night and day. The company's customer service is phenomenally better. For example we were changing windows and had the installer up to swap sensors that day.

Also the alarm uses the HKC app and also texts us. So you can access the alarm from anywhere and even in bad data coverage e.g. Roaming you'll still get instant SMS notifications.

You can also build out the alarm over time, adding more sensors e.g. Smokes and heat etc as you feel like it.

You can also add outputs for home automation - lights etc even heating afaik.

The installation quality was better than PW and the system is as intuitive to use and provides voice feedback much like PW.

I interact with it almost totally through the app.

You own the alarm and you can decide what you want to do : monitor with any number of centers, self monitor, add to it, move it etc ... total flexibility

Also HKC is an Irish electronics company. So you've great local tech support and it's built for Irish style houses and you're supporting an indigenous industry!

Thank you and the huge thing here is, if you had a falling out with your installer or whatever, any other installer can take over the servicing of the system. That is one box that a new PW customer cannot tick either.

cuculainn

BlinkingLights wrote: »

We switched from PhoneWatch to a HKC alarm.
Local installer (quite large though) and we're using a separate monitoring company.

It's like night and day. The company's customer service is phenomenally better. For example we were changing windows and had the installer up to swap sensors that day.

Also the alarm uses the HKC app and also texts us. So you can access the alarm from anywhere and even in bad data coverage e.g. Roaming you'll still get instant SMS notifications.

You can also build out the alarm over time, adding more sensors e.g. Smokes and heat etc as you feel like it.

You can also add outputs for home automation - lights etc even heating afaik.

The installation quality was better than PW and the system is as intuitive to use and provides voice feedback much like PW.

I interact with it almost totally through the app.

You own the alarm and you can decide what you want to do : monitor with any number of centers, self monitor, add to it, move it etc ... total flexibility

Also HKC is an Irish electronics company. So you've great local tech support and it's built for Irish style houses and you're supporting an indigenous industry!

Hi BL
what part of the country are you? Would you PM me your installer? Thanks

Cameraman

kub wrote: »

Common practice as well is if they are back to customers doing routine inspections they remove the old white box and replace it with the Black one.

Why any householder accepts such an eye sore of a colour up on their house is beyond me.

I have an older Phonewatch system - which I intend to replace in due course.
Because of this, I am not on a fixed-term contract (apparently). However, they phoned me recently offering to replace my old white box with a brand new black one. On inquiring further, it turned out that this would tie me in to an 18-month contract (and incidentally provide more advertising for them).

I politely declined.

jimmycrackcorm

kub wrote: »

So let us give the advice here, your notions of ringing your local Garda station because you can see some guy through your phone screen in the process of breaking into your home might seem like a great cost saving exercise to you and this whole monitoring thing some kind of a joke.

Well I will let you in on a little secret, if a monitored Alarm system transmits a verified Alarm signal ( I bet you are lost here ) to a monitoring station, it will receive a more rapid Garda response than your call to the local station, assuming the line is not engaged of course or that the station is open or the lads in the patrol car are on their break.

The Gardai have specific Alarm response criteria and I am afraid your solution just does not comply with it.

This sounds like scare-mongering to me to justify an un-necessary cost..
When I looked up verified signal it sheds some light...

What is a verified alarm?
A verified alarm is an alarm system that has sent in a second signal to confirm the first activation. Many primary signals are accidental as a result of weather or not switching off an alarm in good time. The second, or 'verifying', signal will narrow the probability of an activation being false.

The Gardai will not accept a call from a Monitoring Centre until a Keyholder has been notified and given an estimated time of arrival at the premises.

The purpose of the new policy is to reduce false alarms thereby enabling the Gardai to respond to real activations more promptly.

What is a false alarm?
If the Gardai arrive at a premises and the Keyholder is not there the activation will be treated as a false alarm. Garda response will be withdrawn when the limit of three false alarms in three months is reached. If Garda response is withdrawn, the alarm system must have verification technology installed before it can be reinstated.

So basically the monitoring centre have to call the keyholder first. I think I'd prefer to ring the Guards and say I can see the intruder via my remote cctv.

A while back I rang up the Guards when I saw some people sneaking round the back garden of one of my neighbours. They were pretty prompt in coming around.

CramCycle

PhoneWatch were the most expensive option for my parents in law. I gave them a quote from a competitor and they said that was impossible. Competitor included the install in their annual bill, which is 1/3 of the phone watch one. It is fully monitored, and it has been tested (by accident admittedly). Eircom disconnected them when they came out to install broadband but they sent their guy out free of charge to sort it all out. He also came out to adjust one sensor and disconnect an internal one we did not want (due to a pet in the room), all free of charge.

PM if you would like the company name.

KoolKid

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

This sounds like scare-mongering to me to justify an un-necessary cost..
When I looked up verified signal it sheds some light...

You really think the Guards are going to respond to every lad who sees something on their CCTV or hears an alarm activation.
If that was the case PW, Netwatch and all the others ARCs would be closed years ago.

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

So basically the monitoring centre have to call the keyholder first. I think I'd prefer to ring the Guards and say I can see the intruder via my remote cctv.

A while back I rang up the Guards when I saw some people sneaking round the back garden of one of my neighbours. They were pretty prompt in coming around.

The fact that you had to Google Verified alarm says it all.
Maybe now go off and search Garda Policy on Monitored Intruder Alarms.
Maybe on the next monitored system I set up Ill tell the Guards I don't need to fill out an RC1a form & see how that goes down.
In fact maybe we should tell all the ARCs to stop wasting their money conforming to IS 228.All installers can just use their mobiles as an ARC.
Happy days.:rolleyes::D

kub

listermint wrote: »

Whats a garda monitored system ? i thought phonewatch just ring the guards. Just like you would do if you got an SMS message.

Surely best system is an independent system installed with replaceable parts and in addition some IP CCTV on it you can view on a mobile device.

These are all easily accesible things in todays market.

So tell us all please what wonderful technology you will utilise in the event of a power cut, a router or broadband issue please?
'Hello Guard, I can't view my home CCTV system on my phone, I think my house might be under attack ' :rolleyes:

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

This sounds like scare-mongering to me to justify an un-necessary cost..
When I looked up verified signal it sheds some light...

So basically the monitoring centre have to call the keyholder first. I think I'd prefer to ring the Guards and say I can see the intruder via my remote cctv.

A while back I rang up the Guards when I saw some people sneaking round the back garden of one of my neighbours. They were pretty prompt in coming around.

But you still went ahead and looked it up

.

Monitoring centers have to have at least 2 staff members in situ at all times, the amazing thing here is, one guy could be on the hotline to the Garda Communication Center while the other is on the phone to a keyholer. Also i know for a fact that Gardai will still head to the activation and the monitoring station will keep them updated as to the availability of keyholders.

Your example above of you ringing The Gardai when you witnessed some people sneaking around your neighbours garden.

You were there in person, at home. Same thing as witnessing a crime in progress in front of you. Of course The Gardai got there quickly. Same thing with me if i see a crime in progress, yes they will come quickly, we all expect that level of response.

But they have rules with regard to electronic notification of possible crimes in progress. None of us in the Electronic Security Business made up these rules, we just abide by them and what we do works, I can't say for sure your proposal will meet a similar response.

But you know better than us of course because " This sounds like scare-mongering to me to justify an un-necessary cost.. ".

You keep telling yourself that.

kub

CramCycle wrote: »

PhoneWatch were the most expensive option for my parents in law. I gave them a quote from a competitor and they said that was impossible. Competitor included the install in their annual bill, which is 1/3 of the phone watch one. It is fully monitored, and it has been tested (by accident admittedly). Eircom disconnected them when they came out to install broadband but they sent their guy out free of charge to sort it all out. He also came out to adjust one sensor and disconnect an internal one we did not want (due to a pet in the room), all free of charge.

PM if you would like the company name.

Hi CramCycle, was this recently and did you present them with a particular specification of what you wanted connected to the proposed system?

CramCycle

kub wrote: »

Hi CramCycle, was this recently and did you present them with a particular specification of what you wanted connected to the proposed system?

PW quote was last March, my in laws had asked when they recieved their annual monitoring bill. They could not take over the system we had and needed a full install. Their base charge for installation was more than the annual monitoring charge, and that was without the full number of doors/windows/internals. Even though in my simple mind, they should have been able to but I am not an expert so left it at that. Needless to say, the company who had sent the invoice for the annual monitoring were far cheaper (on the annual charge alone) but on par with others in the sector. Their service also had been tested (by accident) and unlike my neighbours who use phone watch, they actually done everything they were meant to do. The two issues we had, they had the same installer come out (who has the Vodafone store contract now as far as I know) called out. Very quick but very professional. Happy to answer any questions I asked while he worked and the call outs were covered by the annual fee even though they were not issues that were caused or the fault of the monitoring company. For the service, piece of mind, have to credit to both the monitoring company and the installer.

Boaty

In summary, don't go with PW, you won't hear anyone in the know recommend them due to costs etc.
If in doubt contact your counties Crime prevention officer, their numbers are on the Garda website and they will be able to advise you without trying to sell you something you don't need.

kub

Boaty wrote: »

In summary, don't go with PW, you won't hear anyone in the know recommend them due to costs etc.
If in doubt contact your counties Crime prevention officer, their numbers are on the Garda website and they will be able to advise you without trying to sell you something you don't need.

10 / 10 on The Crime prevention officer, I am sick to death of people saying a Garda said.
Gardai are excellent at their jobs and i am not taking from that but they are made up of specialised units in different areas of expertise.

The unit to ask about Home Security is Crime Prevention, not the ERU, Drugs Units, Special Branch, Traffic Corp etc.

qxtasybe1nwfh2

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

So basically the monitoring centre have to call the keyholder first. I think I'd prefer to ring the Guards and say I can see the intruder via my remote cctv.

Not true, Gardai will still attend even if you can't get in contact with a key holder. It is quite common. I work in a monitoring centre.

kub

Belle Plump Azalea wrote: »

Not true, Gardai will still attend even if you can't get in contact with a key holder. It is quite common. I work in a monitoring centre.

Hi Belle Plump Azalea, nice to get some input from you guys in the monitoring stations. Check in here more, we may need you

qxtasybe1nwfh2

kub wrote: »

Hi laurag99, nice to get some input from you guys in the monitoring stations. Check in here more, we may need you

I sure will. I don't work for phonewatch btw but I am aware of the technology and systems they use.

kub

Belle Plump Azalea wrote: »

I sure will. I don't work for phonewatch btw but I am aware of the technology and systems they use.

Ah so it is the security business you are in so

listermint

kub wrote: »

So tell us all please what wonderful technology you will utilise in the event of a power cut, a router or broadband issue please?
'Hello Guard, I can't view my home CCTV system on my phone, I think my house might be under attack ' :rolleyes:

LTE its cheaper and better speeds.

No point arguing there are ways and means of achieving a good system. Thats the long and short of it. Of course you will fight the corner of standards and specs because it is what you are used to. But dont pretend as if adequate solutions cannot be installed without the need for phone monitored systems because this is a forum and 1 voice cant over take everything.

Technology has made it easier than ever to achieve results that would have cost thousands not even 5 years ago. But alas your assertion that a hard fast copper line is the only job when stats now indicate people are getting rid of landlines in their droves. and as for GPRS and LTE well as above they can be achieved easily.

I bid you adieu.