ALARM MONITORING

If you sign up for our monitoring service our technicians will configure your alarm system to communicate with our monitoring centre. When all is well all we will receive from your alarm will be the daily test signal telling us “I am here”.

If someone breaks into your home or business the alarm will tell us that it is in active mode and our operators will promptly implement your emergency instructions.

When we signed you up for monitoring we will have also obtained your instructions – essentially, who to inform – your work telephone numbers, your mobile numbers, the telephone numbers of family members, somebody who you may wish to take responsibility for the site. Typically, your instructions would be for us to send a guard company of your choice to respond to any incidents.

If the guard finds there has been a break in, we would normally call the police to attend and advise you or someone else you may have nominated. If we can’t contact any of your nominees, the guard will normally take responsibility for securing the site.

So you don’t have to worry about the condition of your alarm, if it’s an alarm that we’ve installed, we will have programmed it to send us the range of maintenance signals that it is capable of sending. This may tell us such things as; the battery is about to fail or the mains power has been switched off for an unduly long time.

As well as monitoring security breaches your alarm can also be used to monitor anything that is capable of giving us a signal. The most frequent “other uses” are medical pendants and smoke alarms. But don’t restrict your thinking; we can and do monitor temperature alarms; air-conditioning alarms; water levels. As we’ve said, if it has a suitable output signal we can monitor it.

ALARM SERVICING

Our technicians provide the following services.

Alarm Installation. Our alarm installation work is undertaken by our own employees; not contractors. Our work is to a standard not to a price – you wont find our technicians running unsightly surface wiring round your best rooms.

We use the DSC range of equipment because we know the range and we know it’s robust and reliable. Plus the product is well supported by the importer. We won’t be telling you in a few years time “sorry you can’t get parts for that alarm any more”.

Regular Inspections. We strongly urge all our customers to have our technicians check their alarm system at least annually for a residence and 6 monthly for commercial premises. This check will involve confirming the functionality of the alarm, checking those parts that are prone to failure, e.g. smoke detectors, the external siren parts exposed to the weather and in particular the batteries. We will encourage you to replace the batteries every three years. Battery failure is a significant cause of false alarms.

Faults Service. If you are a customer of ours with a monitoring or service agreement with us and you have the misfortune to have a malfunctioning alarm we will always be available to make the necessary repairs. Being available means 24 hours a day 365 days a year. When you call us for service you don’t get an answering machine you get a real person who may be able to help you with your problem over the phone but if not can call out a technician.

We also carry nearly all the parts for all the alarms in our service vehicles. So if we’re fixing a fault, we virtually never have to go and get a part – it’s usually always done on the spot!

FIRE SYSTEM MONITORING

If your fire alarm is currently monitored by someone else, then you need to talk to us.

We monitor fire alarms and in putting all your monitoring requirements in the hands of Harbour City Security Limited, you can generally save money. We offer deals based on providing multiple services so you reap the benefits.

You also gain another level of protection – Our alarm monitoring network can allow you to have dual-path monitoring with a combination of landline, I.P. and cellular. Most security systems communicate over land lines. By tying the security and fire alarms together, they can use either link to communicate to us in the case of one link going down. So as well as probably saving you money, you get further protection by way of dual-path monitoring. If you fire alarm is unmonitored, you also need to talk to us.

• If you lock yourself out of your property you have a way of getting in again. If you can’t
  remember the lockbox code you could simply phone our Monitoring Centre and they would
  provide you with the code to it as long as you can provide us your correct monitoring code so
  that we can verify a legitimate request. We will not advise you of the security system PIN
  code or your monitoring code as that is something you should know.
• If approved by you, our technicians could use the lockbox key/s for servicing and fault
  attendance of your alarm which will mean you don’t need to make appointments to meet our
  technicians.
• If you have a guard company contracted to attend your property in the event of your alarm
  activating, our Monitoring Centre could supply them with the code to the lockbox instead of
  them having to hold and manage keys to your property. It will also overcome the problem of
  your key/s being in another guard vehicle that is not the one responding to your alarm.
• If in a particular situation you wish us to contact someone else such as a family member,
  neighbour or staff member to attend to your alarm you can give them the codes.
• If you wish to give anyone else such as visitors or contractors access to your property when
  you are not there, then you can give them the lockbox code and alarm system PIN code.
• If we dispatch any emergency service to your property, we can give them the lockbox details
  rather than them having to break-in.
• If you change your door keys or add any extra locks, you can update the keys in your lockbox
  without the need to advise us or to provide new keys to us and/or the guard company.

LIFT PHONES

If you are paying for a telephone line just for your lift, or for lift phone answering, call us.

Chances are it’s better to get Harbour City Security Limited to monitor that as well as your security system. It’s just another way to save money and get the same level of attention that you expect from Wellington’s experts in alarm monitoring.

CAMERA SYSTEMS

See our camera page.