Weighing the Value of Home Security System

By PAUL SULLIVAN
NYT

PEOPLE may be surprised to learn that when they most need their security system to protect their house, they oftentimes cannot rely on it. Jackie Ostrander discovered that when a storm knocked out power to her home in Greenwich, Conn., for a week in March — too long for her backup battery to keep going. And it took her security company three weeks to restart her system.

“I asked, ‘Are we going to get a credit for this?’ We weren’t,” she said of her company, Protection One. “When they came out, I asked, ‘Are you going to charge me for this call?’ They didn’t, but they did charge me $100 for a battery.”

Jonathan Marvin, director of business solutions for Protection One, said, “We could have done better.”

There are about 36 million security systems in the United States, half of them in homes. Revenue for the industry was $28.2 billion in 2009, according to the Installation Business Report, an annual security industry survey. So a lot of people apparently think their homes are going to be impervious to burglars.

(More here.)