SimpliSae<\/a> because monitoring is less expensive and there’s no contract. The disadvantage would be having to replace, not just the alarm panel, but also all the sensors. Still, we’re annoyed enoughwithcontracts and inaccessible touch screen panels that I’m OK with that.<\/p>\nSo I go to the door, and there’s this guy. And he says he’s with GE, who manufactures my security system, and starts asking about it. I tell him, yes, my contract is nearly up, and we were looking at a change. After one thing and another, he says he can get me a security camera, as well as cut my monitoring per month by $5, and would I like to replace the touch panel keypad with one that has buttons? He can get us that and the camera for free if I sign up today. Well, of course, after getting pressured into other sign up today or it’ll be gone tomorrow things, I asked him for his card, I’d like to talk it over with my wife and get back with him. He said he was only seeing a couple of houses today, and what’s there to think about anyway? Immediate red flags. I told him, again, if he didn’t have a card for me to get in touch with him, because I wanted to give it some thought, there wasn’t much more to discuss. He said he had one, but he didn’t seem all that eager that i should have it. Eventually, I just said, “I think we’re done here”, wished him a good day, and closed the door.<\/p>\n
Matt, melanie’s nurse, told me that he was wearing an APX hat. APX was the company we’d initially got set up with on our contract. Trouble is, they haven’t been APX for a couple years. And he told me he was with GE, not APX or Vivint, the current name for APX. Him telling me that didn’t set right with me in the first place.<\/p>\n
So what can I take away from this?<\/p>\n
1) Don’t get pressured into anything. If you can’t sleep on it, or if the guy at the door isn’t willing to give you his card or some way to get in touch with him later, that makes your decision for you. <\/p>\n
2) OK, even if he says “this deal might not be available tomorrow”, he should still be willing to give you some contact info. But anyway, I’d find anything that’s “sign up right now, I’ll do this and this and that” a little suspect, especially since he didn’t disclose the length of any new contract. <\/p>\n
3) Go with your gut. Something felt wrong about the guy. <\/p>\n
4) The alarm contract is not in my name, but he called me by name. True, it’s my legal name and not Buddy. He would have maybe gotten this from the real estate records or somewhere? Of course, I sort of noticed that at the time, but didn’t analyze until later.<\/p>\n
Anyway, be careful, guys. I think this guy might have had me pegged for an idiot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The more I think about this, the more annoyed I get. About an hour ago, I had an encounter with someone who came to my door as I was making my lunch. Melanie’s nurse answered the door (interestingly, Fiona didn’t bark, and only Alena heard the knock), and told me that there was this guy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[81,82,83,31,84,80],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-stuff","category-opinion","tag-alarm-system","tag-annoying","tag-blog","tag-opinion-2","tag-pushy","tag-salesmen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buddy.brannan.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}