Good day All,
I am a user, rather than an installer, but this situation will probably interest many installers as well.
I had an alarm system installed by a reputable local company in 1991 and never had a problem. In December 2012, I moved house and naturally turned to them for a new intruder system. (They had actually been taken over by a larger company by then, but the local company was still "an independent operating division".) A system was duly installed and all appeared to be fine until earlier this year when it suddenly occurred to me to ask the service engineer on his annual visit if he had tested the speech dialler function, which would call my mobile to alert me to any triggering. He did not know that I had a speech dialler installed ("bit hard to spot unless you are looking for it") but he then checked it and found it was not working. Given what he had said about not knowing it was installed, it appeared odds-on that it had not been checked since the first annual service in late 2013. He then informed me that the control panel, a GT490X, was no longer being installed so repair was not possible and the replacement control panel they now used would not work with the Vocom speech dialler that was installed. So, a big, and costly, reinstall to restore the speech dialler function. In subsequent exchanges with the company, they stated that their equipment supplier had ceased to make the GT490X available in 2014. I asked if the new panel had any kind of continuity of service guarantee from their supplier and they cheerfully said 20 years, so no problem.
This raises a huge question. Should a company, as part of its due diligence to customers, have obtained an assurance from its supplier that its products would be available / maintainable for a certain period before continuing to install a particular type of control panel? My installation became unrepairable within two years of being installed, which to me appears to be the result of a very bad practice somewhere along the line. If their relationship with their supplier was what we would hope was a normal commercial one; i.e. trust and willing disclosure of plans, then this situation - a drop-dead ending of supply and support - simply should not have arisen.
So, I would be grateful for any comment. I would especially like to know if the GT490X really did become generally unavailable during 2014, or might my installer simply have decided to change its product offerings for its own commercial benefit; and blow the customer?
Thanks very much!
Cheers,
IA