Throughout my career, I have been committed to the success of our industry, not only to its growth and financial success, but to its reputation as a major sector of our economy that has matured, is widely supported, and is trusted by homeowners and businesses throughout the country. I’m extremely proud of Rapid Response’s success in serving our Dealers, but I have never failed to appreciate our part in the development of the industry as a whole.
I speak to this now because I am concerned that the integrity and trust that is a cornerstone of our industry’s success – and of our customers’ safety – is being undermined by the decision to allow for the monitoring of critical alarms from, ironically, unsecured locations. At-home monitoring was permitted and later codified during the COVID-19 pandemic; a trade-off that has now come to haunt us.
There are a myriad of arguments against at-home monitoring… I’ve not heard one that wasn’t valid, but they may be succinctly defined in the observation that working remotely offers zero data security and monitoring operators themselves are exposed to the emergency situations that they are monitoring for, such as burglaries, fires, weather events, power loss, internet outage etc., and, in that, there are significant uncertainties and not enough monitoring center redundancies.
Moreover, it’s unclear whether monitoring centers that have adopted at-home monitoring, in part or completely, make it known, which means consumers may not know what they have contracted for. That is an unfair business practice which creates a legal cloud over the entire industry.
Rapid Response never sent monitoring personnel to work from home during the pandemic. Since 1992, we have exclusively provided professional monitoring services 100% from our hardened, fully secure and redundant facilities, and always will. Moreover, our Dealer Support and Data Entry departments exclusively serve our Dealer partners 100% from our facilities. There are no “work from home” evenings or weekends either. 100% means 100%. That is professional monitoring… anything else is simply not.
I certify with my signature on this letter that Rapid Response is absolutely committed to In-Facility Monitoring and monitoring support services. It is a commitment to the safety of your customers and to the continued success of your business. And it is a commitment to the integrity of our industry.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Atkins
President
To read more about our commitment to In-Facility Monitoring, click here.
