Horror in the US

[Guest tiggerkev]

Hello All,

just a word of advice if any one is thinking of emigrating to the USA, dont go into the Security Industry.

I moved here 5 years ago, after working in the Industry in England, I thought the technology would be more advanced ( wrong ).

I worked service for the company I joined here and found out there is no requirement for periodic maintenance.Wireless systems are very popular ( quick and easy to install ) but a nightmare for a service tech. The contacts were put on using double sided tape, the batteries in them quickly wore out. A lot of houses are pre wired at the start of the building process, hence when it comes time to install most of the wires are damaged.

The straw that broke the camels back though was I had to go to an Antique warehouse, they were having problems. Turns out not enough cable had been run for the amount of zones they had. So being a good tech I spent all afternoon there fixing it. I went into work next morning feeling pleased with my self only to be asked where the customers cheque was for the work I had done. After explaining that it was our fault and we were open to liability if the lost some of the expensive stock, the question came again where was the cheque at which point I politely told them what to do with the job.

I now work on scanners at airports.

[Monteey]

I also gather tampers arent used at all over there nor are external bells, seems we over here maybe well ahead of the US market in technology terms

[Guest Cerberus NI]

Having worked with //.National Installer.// here I was at our hub briefing and one of the topics was improving response times.Apparantly the heads in the US don't get the two hour response thing - 4/5 days was the normal expected time!

[Guest G.J.M]

perfect.That will do me when i get a call at 3am

[Service Engineer]

What's the pay like in the States..?

[Guest G.J.M]

They have really funny ideas with Fire too.

When i was in Orlando the Hotel had a 5839-6 system.For non fire that is every room has a stand alone smoke alarm and the main hotel is served by a part 1 fire alarm system.

So if you have a fire in your room you run out and hit the call point.Or if you set it off by accident you don't evacuate the hotel.

They must not have the technology to have delayed sounders

[Guest tiggerkev]

to answer some of the questions

Thats right no tampers, no external bells

The pay is not very good, better for installers that do 3 - 5 installs a day.

Not many 3 am call outs, the customers will not pay the high fee's

They are really into 2 way systems at the moment, the comms centre being able to talk to the customer via the panel and speakers

[Guest G.J.M]

so if they get a bell ringing at 2 am,do they just let it ring?

[Guest Cerberus NI]

Previous employer took on an apartment block with 5 floors of accommodation,with a possible 200 + people in it at once.Each apartment had it's own mains smokie from their consumer board. This in itself is ok in relation to HMO's as long as there is an L3 system covering the corridors and stairwells (fire escape routes).Somehow it's sitting with one of those Explorer addressable things with callpoints only!!!I refused to maintain it and brought my FLM round to it and explained why.The owner/property manager understood where I was coming from but as he had a cert to say it was ok he wasn't fussed!The fact that cars had been set alight three weekends running in the secure integral car park did not inspire my confidence any further.

[Zak]

I lived in Guatemala for a while. They use US panels for alarms. A store with expensive stock was broken into through the vacant place next door, they crawled behind the counter, avoiding the main pir, got to the panel, smashed the **** out of it, then cut all cables. When the panel was re-instated (reconnected the remote keypad) not one tamper was displayed!! It was then I discovered that tampers weren't used on US panels. Unbelievable!