PDA

View Full Version : Any opinions on Bell Alarm Home Monitoring?


jm1
Aug 1st, 2007, 08:26 AM
I'm wondering if anyone's signed up with this new service. My ADT contract is up, and the Bell offering seems interesting:

https://www.bellhomemonitoring.ca/portal/en/PreSale.aspx

It looks interesting, in that there's a web interface and it's over a cellular network, so they can't cut your telephone line (the additional charge ADT wants for a cellular link is very high). You can even add video cameras to the web interface. Monthly self-monitoring is $20 and it's $25 if you want their call centre to monitor, so it's comparable to ADT and Chubb prices, but you get the niftier features.

I know there's The Monitoring Centre, etc. which is cheaper or I can negotiate with ADT or there are fancy X10 solutions available, and I would have some additional upfront hardware costs with Bell, but putting that aside, can anyone who has put this or looked into it in comment on the reliability, etc. of the Bell system?

For something that needs to be reliable, I don't want to end up being a beta tester or guinea pig for a something that Bell might have rushed to market.

dmyvr
Aug 1st, 2007, 01:12 PM
I think you have to buy their hardware though - you woun't be able to take an existing system and re-program it for Bell.

phildc
Aug 1st, 2007, 01:29 PM
The last thing I wanna do is give more of my hard earned $$$ to Bell, but this looks interesting....

zalapski
Aug 1st, 2007, 01:38 PM
The last thing I wanna do is give more of my hard earned $$$ to Bell, but this looks interesting....


Or more workload for the ever helpful Emily, the virtual CSR.

jm1
Aug 1st, 2007, 05:33 PM
I think you have to buy their hardware though - you woun't be able to take an existing system and re-program it for Bell.

That's correct, but putting initial costs and cost comparisons aside, as I mentioned in the first post, I'm just interested in the reliability aspect for now. If this new system isn't reliable, then cost is irrelevant, even if they were giving it away. If it's super reliable and the features work well, then we can do a cost comparison against others at that point.