Help with ADT alarm

[Singletoned]

We moved into our house about 6 years ago and there was an ADT alarm fitted.  We chose not to continue using them, mainly as the salesman was so sleazy it put us off. The alarm has mostly been working fine since then, but now it has started going off randomly.  I contacted the local alarm and lock company in the high street, but they said they couldn't do anything unless the alarm had been engineer unlocked.  I contacted ADT about getting this done and they said I would have to pay £250 for them to unlock it (which seems extortionate and I am reluctant to do).

 

Can anyone give me advice on what my potential next steps could be?  Is there anyway to unlock it without paying ADT?  (I know you can't give out engineer codes over the internet, for obvious reasons.  But is it considered okay to pay a non-ADT person to come and unlock the alarm?)

 

Is it feasible to rip out the old alarm without unlocking it and just installing a new one?  Is that very expensive to do?  Would I have to do that myself or could I pay someone to do that even if it isn't unlocked?

 

Any help gratefully appreciated, or even just pointers on better places to look for answers.

 

Thanks

 

Ed

[norman]

Any decent company should be able to crash and reprogramme the panel in around an hour, most will probably know the engineer code anyway so try a couple more companies.

[datadiffusion]

As above and at worst the main box / circuit board can simply be replaced if the code is fully locked against changing.

[james.wilson]

what panel do you have?

[PeterJames]

43 minutes ago, norman said:

Any decent company should be able to crash and reprogramme the panel in around an hour, most will probably know the engineer code anyway so try a couple more companies.

Yep any good company will be able to help assuming its not a lesucre. If a company is going to take responsibility for fixing it, then they should defaulting it and reprogramming it from scratch in the first place, otherwise they are just assuming that the losing company has programmed it correctly in the first place. 

Search here http://www.nsi.org.uk/directory/#topform or ssaibb.co.uk for proper companies in your area, phone a few you will find someone that can look after it properly, you will need a new battery and a service as well as the fault find, my money is on the battery as the root cause though

[Singletoned]

Thanks for this everyone!

 

I'll call round a few more companies.  Unfortunately www.nsi.org.uk and ssaib.co.uk both seem to be having trouble with their websites at the moment.  The search doesn't work on either of them.  I've been looking on checkatrade.com and have found a couple of well reviewed people who are members of SSAIB.

 

Thanks

[Lwillis]

As above most companies can take them over if it's not a LeSecure. 

Where abouts are you maybe there's a member here in your area who can help. 

 

[PeterJames]

He's Berkshire