To clarify, if you're upgrading from Gen 2 to Gen 3, the process on our end is very similar to a Base Station replacement. That is, we would simply replace the serial of your old Base Station with the new one - so Monitoring is listening for signals from the new Base only.
That means that your Monitoring Service remains intact and fully active. Any alarm signals that come through would go through the standard alarm dispatch sequence.
Our representative should have made that clear! Over the phone, we can also put your system into a Test Mode with the Monitoring Service, so that you can test for full alarms without Dispatch getting involved.
I accept that this is the default behavior, but I think it is a TERRIBLE design. Imagine if somebody had a system for 1 year w/o the monitoring service, then decided to get monitoring. Every event for the past year would cause a call for Police ?? Heck, a SWAT team would arrive !!
Surely the design should be changed such that any time a base station is added to a new monitoring account, past events should be either cleared out, or at least not referred to monitoring for a Police call.
Also, I will pass along to you that I called customer service twice (once after each call from Monitoring). I spoke to a different CSR each time, and neither of them had any idea of what I was talking about, or how such a thing could happen.
A SOP for me when I am working or testing my system bimonthly: I put system in test mode, and when I get the call with recording I trf to a live COPS agent and tell them to put the entire system in test for x time (usually an hour). Yeah, I am tying up one of their agents for about 3 minutes six times a year but it avoids issues. An hour is plenty of time for me to clean my smoke and CO sensors, test what I want etc.
Really the thing is that as far as the service side is concerned, the Monitoring Plan hasn't changed at all. The only thing that has changed is that there's a different Base Station reporting.
In theory, if you're only swapping out your Base Station, you wouldn't need a pause in dispatch, since you already know how to use the system. Same for if you're coming back from a long pause in service.
We do also have the Test Mode through the Keypad menu, that allows you to test all your sensors. But if you want to do a more thorough test with real sirens, that's what putting the
Monitoring into Test Mode is for. We just need to have you on the phone to verbally confirm your Safe Word, since of course this impacts your system's ability to report to Monitoring and trigger dispatch.
- Johnny M. SimpliSafe Home Security
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davey_d
Community Admin
•
4.3K Messages
2 years ago
To clarify, if you're upgrading from Gen 2 to Gen 3, the process on our end is very similar to a Base Station replacement. That is, we would simply replace the serial of your old Base Station with the new one - so Monitoring is listening for signals from the new Base only.
That means that your Monitoring Service remains intact and fully active. Any alarm signals that come through would go through the standard alarm dispatch sequence.
Our representative should have made that clear! Over the phone, we can also put your system into a Test Mode with the Monitoring Service, so that you can test for full alarms without Dispatch getting involved.
- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security
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captain11
Captain
•
5.1K Messages
2 years ago
0
0
davey_d
Community Admin
•
4.3K Messages
2 years ago
Really the thing is that as far as the service side is concerned, the Monitoring Plan hasn't changed at all. The only thing that has changed is that there's a different Base Station reporting.
In theory, if you're only swapping out your Base Station, you wouldn't need a pause in dispatch, since you already know how to use the system. Same for if you're coming back from a long pause in service.
We do also have the Test Mode through the Keypad menu, that allows you to test all your sensors. But if you want to do a more thorough test with real sirens, that's what putting the Monitoring into Test Mode is for. We just need to have you on the phone to verbally confirm your Safe Word, since of course this impacts your system's ability to report to Monitoring and trigger dispatch.
- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security
0
0