What Happens During the Event of an Alarm?
Updated
SimpliSafe’s Professional Monitoring protects your home or building across many types of alarms. If an alarm is triggered from your system, you’ll be immediately notified through App Push Notifications and Alarm Text Messages. Depending on your monitoring plan and the type of alarm that is triggered, you’ll receive a phone call from our Monitoring Center to verify the alarm and go over your options. The exception to this are silent panic button or duress alarms, which will send a signal to our Monitoring Center to request emergency services right away. In this event, you will not receive a push notification, alarm text, or phone call from the Monitoring Center.
The types of alarms that can occur are divided into three categories:
Burglary
Life Safety
Environmental (Water and Temperature Alerts)
Burglary (Entry, Motion, Glassbreak, Panic Button)
When a burglary sensor is triggered (Entry, Motion, Glassbreak, or a Panic Button), our Monitoring Center is informed immediately. The monitoring service will attempt to reach your Primary Contacts to inform you of the alarm and determine whether the police should be dispatched. They'll ask for your Safe Word and if you wish to cancel dispatch (not send emergency authorities). Otherwise, the monitoring center will dispatch emergency authorities. If the Panic Button is configured to be silent (duress), you will not receive a text or phone call. Our Monitoring Center will request emergency services to be dispatched to your location without reaching out.
Please note, giving the wrong Safe Word will result in dispatch. You won't be told you got it wrong to protect anyone who may be under duress. Missing the phone calls to your Primary Contacts will also result in police dispatch. Make sure to save our Monitoring Center’s number (855-693-4911) to your phone, and allow SimpliSafe to bypass any Do Not Disturb or silenced features using the steps here.
When using the Panic button, you'll receive a text from us confirming the alarm. The primary contact will also receive a phone call and can cancel the alarm via phone using the safe word. Panic Button alarms cannot be canceled via alarm texts.
If no Primary Contacts are reached, police will be dispatched and our Monitoring Center will contact any Secondary Contacts you have set up to notify them that the police are on their way.
If an Entry-, Motion-, or Glassbreak-triggered alarm is disarmed within 30–60 seconds of the initial alarm signal, our monitoring service will consider this a false alarm. That means you will not receive a phone call and police will not be dispatched.
Life Safety (Smoke and CO)
When a Life Safety sensor is triggered (Smoke and CO), the Monitoring Center will only contact the first Primary Contact as time could be critical. The Safe Word is not required to cancel dispatch for a Smoke alarm, you just need to pick up the phone and tell them it is a false alarm. For a CO alarm, two things will happen at once. You will be called, and emergency services will be dispatched to your location. Due to the serious and potentially life-threatening nature of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, there is no way to cancel CO alarms.
If dispatch occurs for either Smoke or CO alarms, the Fire Department will be sent to the address of your system where the alarm was triggered.
Environmental (Water and Temperature)
When an Environmental sensor is triggered (Water and Temperature), the monitoring service will call both Primary Contacts to notify them. Environmental alarms do not result in dispatch regardless of whether you answer the phone or not. This is just a notification call from the monitoring center.