Risco eurosec CPX wireless alarm system

[MrHappy]

1 hour ago, Maria Gill said:

I personally don't think it was a good price as it takes them less than 5 minutes to get to our house and it took less than 10 minutes to replace the batteries.

 

If they traveled further it might have costed more ?

 

they on site in normal working hrs (mon -fri in 9-5 hr)

[datadiffusion]

I must admit if I'd been told straight up that a battery had been deep discharged for 30 hrs or so, I would probably replace it, though I suppose if I then attended the system some hours since the power was restored,  and my ACT tester was showing 7ah (I.e OK) I possibly wouldn't rush to replace it..

 

Also if I turned up to any job and was told it hadn't been serviced in years, I too would assume this meant all batteries were ancient nd would offer to replace them as a matter of course.

 

However,  I have now just re-read your post and didn't realise the system was only 21 months old (I'd still recommend device battery changes though, Scantronic suggests 3 year life absolute max. for most devices...) nor that you'd invited back the original installer.

 

Bit of a funny one, price not really outrageous if I'm honest, possibly a slightly odd approach re. Device batteries, and yes, I would pass invoice to builders esp. If NOT itemised!

 

Unfortunately not a very good system in the first place, and I assume your previous systems were not wireless and *should* have been regularly serviced.

Edited October 14, 2017 by datadiffusion

[PeterJames]

£50 is too cheap and £10.00 per battery is to dear but £104 is still reasonable, we would have charged £76 for the call out and around £4.50 per battery plus VAT so about the same. Sounds expensive but name a profession that isn't expensive, and your not paying for how far he travels or how long he was there for, you're paying for someone to do something you could not do yourself. 

 

The lithium batteries would not necessarily be influenced by the mains failure, the main control panel would have been and it would have taken a full 24hrs to recharge.

 

Its difficult to surmise the exact events after power was returned to your panel, but I would guess that the battery would have pulled the system down until the battery was fully charged and the system had been restarted, and that would be when the low batteries in the detectors would have been discovered.

 

In my experience Lithium batteries rarely last three years despite what the manufactures tell you, we change batteries yearly because its cheaper than calling us out between service visits.

 

You could  with the builders that the batteries would have not needed to be changed so soon if it not for the power incident, but they will be claiming on their insurance anyway. I suspect food in your freezer and fridge was spoilt, and you have suffered inconvenience no hot water, lights, etc, on top of the alarm problem, the insurance negotiators will be used to dealing with this sort of thing.

[datadiffusion]

20 minutes ago, PeterJames said:

You could  with the builders that the batteries would have not needed to be changed so soon if it not for the power incident, but they will be claiming on their insurance anyway. I suspect food in your freezer and fridge was spoilt, and you have suffered inconvenience no hot water, lights, etc, on top of the alarm problem, the insurance negotiators will be used to dealing with this sort of thing.

 

Realistically if the invoice just states 'to get alarm working after power failure, change batteries, £104' which it probably will, if it's even that detailed, then you have no need to worry anyway. Had it had a zero on the end, no doubt futher investigation would have been made by the builder and/or claims handler!

 

Most board company excepted I have come to realise few if any other trades issue such detailed and itemised invoices as us, for our size at least...

Edited October 14, 2017 by datadiffusion

[Hillbilly]

Remember on the CPX the system needs time to recharge the battery up to 11.8v and over to function or you will get Batt/Fuse fault.

£114 to get the system serviced and new batteries is about the standard price Imo.

[Maria Gill]

It's not the price that is bothering me so much as the engineer saying the damaged outside electric cable had absolutely nothing to do with the system failure. That's far too much of a coincidence. He also put that on the invoice and also put that the failure was due to the system not being serviced and that the sensor batteries had failed because of lack of service. He had no right to put any of that. There is no way they are not connected. Cable gets damaged by builders resulting in power outage for nearly 30 hours and that is the reason for the alarm failure - not because it wasn't serviced after its first year. I just don't believe him and I need someone to explain how it could be sheer coincidence that these things happened at exactly the same time?  I need a plausible answer please! 

[james.wilson]

I don't know the gear but was it all sensors or just 1 or 2

[datadiffusion]

32 minutes ago, Maria Gill said:

It's not the price that is bothering me so much as the engineer saying the damaged outside electric cable had absolutely nothing to do with the system failure. That's far too much of a coincidence. He also put that on the invoice and also put that the failure was due to the system not being serviced and that the sensor batteries had failed because of lack of service. He had no right to put any of that. There is no way they are not connected. Cable gets damaged by builders resulting in power outage for nearly 30 hours and that is the reason for the alarm failure - not because it wasn't serviced after its first year. I just don't believe him and I need someone to explain how it could be sheer coincidence that these things happened at exactly the same time?  I need a plausible answer please! 

 

Write him a short, polite note stating that in the interests of quick, hassle free payment, a much 'plainer' invoice will be useful...

 

However, again, events like this whilst probably nothing to do with the power cut, DO show that there is good reason to have your system regularly serviced. Perhaps by someone a little less passive-aggressive, but serviced none the less. 

2 years is pretty much your limit on RF sensor batteries, 3 at the most on some door contacts unless high traffic. As above, many would recommend annually, which we do on certain sites (e.g. fully comprehensive cover) but as a minimum 2 years.

Edited October 16, 2017 by datadiffusion

[PeterJames]

Is the company an approved company?

[sixwheeledbeast]

From what I gather on your posts above I would say:-

Not many systems are designed to last 30 hours with no power.

If the control panel battery is exhausted then your system may not power back up when the mains restores.

Your sensor batteries are separate from the mains failure/control panel battery failure, if they where failing you will never truly know now.

 

I would recommend radio sensors batteries are replace annually, they never last as long as the manufacturer claims.

There is no way I wouldn't recommand a full service to a non-maintained customer if it had not been serviced within 12 months.

If this isn't explained you'll be back again within 12 months to swap the batteries and the customer would expect this to be FOC.