Home Alarm System - El Segundo,CA

We have Vivint and love it. It's wireless so you don't have to worry about power outages, it comes with onstar, you have a duress code in case of a forced entry, you can check from your phone or online to see when/if your doors are open. Motion detection, etc. It's only $50 a month and to us, it's well worth it! I run an in-home daycare and right after we got it installed it sounded the alarm when our 3 year old tried to go out the front door at 6am.

Make them give you the keychain remotes free. Installation is free with a 2 year or more contract. We pay $30 per month.

Also, glass breaking sensors can go off a lot if you have people slamming shower doors on tracks. In our house with shower doors, we left the alarm off the bathroom window with a shower door. In this house, every window has a sensor. If it opens or breaks, the alarm goes off.

We also have sensors on each door knob. My FIL tried to sneak in one morning and it went off as soon as he started to turn the knob. I love that.
We did not hook it to our garage door because we have workers who need access to our garage. We have a keypad for opening the door. The next house will have it hooked to the garage door.

I prefer the kind with the panic alarm for fire, police, and ambulance. That way the company knows exactly what type emergency it is without waiting to call you to verify.

Yes, I used the panic alarm and it got the police there fast, especially since I gave the alarm company a heads up about a crazy, violent relative.

We have Monitronics and I see they have one in California with the same company logo.

We have had it for about 10 years now and we have had good success with them. I think they all pretty much offer the same thing. Voice monitoring, emergency single touch buttons, window breaking detectors, noise detectors above so many decibels.

Our system is hooked to the garage roll up door, which the company thought was different, but I don't like the thought that someone could easily break into your garage, roll the door back down, then work on the entrance to your home. We don't use garage door openers in the car because I believe it is too easy for someone to break into a car and then they have your address & door opener. Along with the alarm, we have a 95 lb Rottie.

Just this afternoon a female rang the neighbors bell and they didn't answer. With that, the male hopped the fence and took a crow bar to the back door, but they were home! When the guy realized they were home, he jumped the fence and hopped back in the car and they took off. I was told to always acknowledge that you are in the house, but don't open the door. I can't tell you how many times I have been asked if I could open the door.

I have Melaleuca Security. We love it. It was less expensive than the prices we were quoted several years ago.

What I have found is there are small companies that you pay up front and pay a small monitoring fee. Then there are companies like ADT and Brinks that charge you very little up front but charge three times the monitoring.

I payed 1,400 for my alarm when I built this house, that alarm is alive and kicking. Had I gone through ADT I would have paid 50 a month more all that time for the monitoring. That would mean I would have paid 12,000 for that free alarm. So if you are planning on being in your home for a long time pay for the alarm up front and compare monitoring fees in the long term.

Oh just for comparison my monitoring is 15 a month.

We bought a house (in tx) last September that came with an alarm system that we took over the contract from the previous owners. The company is called Vivint(I don't know if they are everywhere) and I love it. We pay $48 a month for the system and we have shatter sensors, motion detectors, a keypad on the front door, we can control the system from a remote that's on our keychains or our phones.

This is the first time we have had one and now I don't think I could not have one!! I think the previous owners paid about $600 for the system and all the sensors.

And I love that it tells me everytime my son(5) opens the back door or his windows in his room. My husband thinks the lady's voice that says "back door open" is annoying but for me it's amazing!!

when we bought our most recent home it was all pre-wired as it was a model and I began calling of course, the original company. Bay alarm came out and bid me at $395 to activate the home and for full service alarm as average cost at maybe $40-49 a month. I then called out ADT who had a promotional rate of $99 installation and same type of monitoring cost. This only included 2 openings and a sensor. I told them I was interested in activating my own equipment and they told me that they don't like to use other equipment. Oh, and Bay Alarm (the first) needed a remote phone or something that was an additional cost. My reason for all of this story is because I was shocked when one evening I took a solicitor call from Monitronics and explained my situation. They came out the next night and for $69 they activated the entire home and for $40 a month would monitor my home for fire, burglary and paramedic. This included 2 remotes for our key rings and we have been more than happy with the service and protection.

Give them a call 800-290-0709

good luck

I use Mijac Alarm out of Rancho Cucamonga. The owners are family friends and my cousin works there. They have been around for a long time. I trust them completely. There is an initial set up then a small monthly fee. I had them set up my house 6 years ago so I don't know what the current fees would be. Good luck!

We bought ours through Alarm.com. We like it because it's internet based so if they cut the phone lines, we still have an alarm. Also, it has a battery back-up so if the power goes out, we still have the alarm. There are different packages you can purchase and you set up yourself or you can pay more to have someone else come out to set it up. You can have it so if the alarm goes off, it rings several people's phones and emails you, or you can set it up to notify the police department. We have it set up to notify us and my Mom because (especially in the beginning) we set ours off a lot.

We can set the alarm from our phone while we're away. We can create different codes for different people (i.e. babysitter, etc.) and then change them. We have motion detectors in rooms where we have expensive electronics and we have alarm sensors on each of our windows and our back door where it would be easy to get in or there is low visibility. We don't pay a high monthly fee because we're not set up with the police notification. We paid a one time fee and set all of this up and now I think we pay about $18/month. You also get keychain remotes.

It's been great and we've been very happy.

There is ADT or BRINKS home security. Either of them aren't terribly expensive. The initial set up will be a bit more because you will be purchasing the sensors for the doors and windows plus the keypad control. However, they usually will spread the cost out over a couple of bills. I must say though it is worth the peace of mind.