Security Horror Stories

A horror story of a difference! I was sent to install an alarm in a big house in Norwich once. when i got there the woman introduced her self and her 4 year old son. We spent the first half hour walking round her house discussing the possition of sensors, keypad ect. Then as soon as I started pulling up carpets and drilling holes the woman asked if I would be ok to carry on while she went into town shopping. I shouted down the stairs that its ok and I would be there for around 7 hours. The front door shut and I heard her car drive away. Not more than 5 minutes later I saw the little lad come up the stairs!!! Yep! she left me baby sitting! (she was away for a good 2…

I was sent to fit an alarm system in a bungalow about 5 years ago, The customer left a note to pick up the keys from the neighbour in the morning - which I did. I spent the day working alone fitting the alarm system. When I finnished, I locked up and gave the key back to the neighbour. As agreed I returned the next day to demonstate the system to the customer. To my supprise both mr and mrs customer were dwarfs! not nuch higher than 4 feet tall and the keypad was install to my eye level. I had to move the keypad and they were not too happy about the holes left in the wall from the original position. Woops! Keiko.

Quite a few earlier posts in other sections have mentioned the curse of 9V smoke alarms bleeping and being blamed on the alarm panel. Here's a similar story that's probably best put down to experience. It started with a phone call from an elederly couple, the conversation went something like this: Customer: There something wrong with our alarm, it keeps bleeping. Me: What sort of bleep is it? C: Well about very minute there's a high pitched beep. M: That sounds like your smoke alarm rather than the burglar alarm, have you checked the batteries? C: It's definitely the burglar alarm, anyway we only changed the batteries on the smoke detector a couple of months ago. …

Today I started to install a system in a ex Council House (Still Not Finished It!) Sub didnt want any cables showing, no problem I said, so under the floor boards they all went Kitchen PIR was a bit of a pain as it came up under the emersion heater cupboard So me being me shoved my hand under the floorboards to reach the 6core I had shoved up from below NEXT THING *&^%$£ BANG!! .................and Im of to Hospital Turns out some kind person had taken a feed of the ring main with a 30amp junction and hadnt put the cover on and I caught my hand on the terminals Left hand now hand Blackened bruised and a few splinters Moral to this story.....Dont sho…

I was just about to drill through a wall to run PIR cable but this chap had a beautiful paper whatever they're called ( border?) so as a pro I used the old un-sticky masking tape trick. Drilled the hole and removed the tape, but to my horror, a big chunk of this blue China pattern border came off too. Oh, and by the way, it was n't coming off the tape. ........ So, I rushed down to the local Wallpaper shop but nothing to be found, so I got a blue biro and drew the pattern on the wall..............I'm not kidding, you would never have known appart from the blue Samari knight with his cross-eyed expression and matching snaked shaped sword. Not to mention the odd socks an…

i was sent to a job to remove panel and signaling as the customer had canceled his contract so i turn up at this dance club ( not rave music ) 4 to 10 year old girls learning to dance. there are about 30 girls in the room and a teacher and i am in the corner with the lid off the panel. I pull the fuse out of the fuse spur and cut all the alarm cables then i cut the 2.5mm mains in the panel. shoot i see stars my cutters are in bits and a face full of shrapnell i shout out Fu*k me and all the kids screem and run to the back of the room and the teacher looks at me like its the end of the world. turns out the D*ck head that fitted it ran the feed to the fuse spur int…

Many years ago when installing a system into a rather large nice house it was aboust 15:30 and the job was going good when i started drilling in the hall up behind the victorian coving for the passive in the hall. My mate was on the landing with the boards up waiting. Drilling and Drilling nothing only a metal noise, i shouts up see anything or any pipes NO, so i carry on drilling. Then you see it the spiral of waet down the meter bit. I ran up stairs checked to find we had drilled up in the airing cupboard and into the bottom of a 57 gallon hot water tank. Well 2 hours latter water is still running through the roof all over the place where the halogen lights are fitted…

last week i got a call out to a jewlers shop in a towm centre when i got there i had to wait 3/4 of an hour for the key holder ( very strange for an //.National Installer.// eng ) anyway the local security firm turned up ( key holder ) the wrong way down a one way street with no lights on. mmm i thought here we go again...??? so we get to the shop and it takes him 5 mins to get the locks off the shutters and its the 1st time he has been to this site and my 1st time too. So i say have you got th code ?? yes its on my the back of my hand. ok shutters go up and entry timer starts but ha cant find the key for the front door then it go's into alarm ( scantronic 9600 i…

We took over an alarm it was originally installed maintained and mointored by British Gas so when it come to defaulting it you couldn,t because it would only default it to British Gas default setting. So had loads of trouble trying to get ways of defaulting it and engineer codes etc. So spoke to elverley who specialist in the DSC range and they advised us to contact British Gas so I did. Spoke to someone and they where ever so helpful (thank u who ever you are lol) they dialled in for us and reset the code got it sorted and that all lovley customer happy alarm monitored no probs. then my stupid stupid engineer (you know who you are) when to do a maintainance on it tryed p…

While working at a monitoring centre for a National company I was involved in the monitoring of some of the first video verification units routinely connected to an alarm. The systems worked in the usual way, signal when set and unset and when the alarm activated it sent through pictures from the nearest camera unit. During my first 'live' night shift after training I was told to look after any video alarms that came in. My colleagues seemed to get very agitated at around 11.30 and they seemed to be paying more attention to my work station than their own. At around 11.40 my screen flicked into life and an address of a house appeared on my screen. I was confused as it…

A few years ago, while working in an alarm receiving centre, I was given a project to do which involved tracking down any 'spurious' signals that the centre was getting. One such signal was a digi with an unknown chip number dialling to one of our receivers. After a few hours digging I managed to track it down to a site that had been cancelled off our database about 6 months earlier. When I looked into this I found out that the digi had been programmed with an hourly test feature. It seemed that this was the root of the problem as the channels matched up. The only problem was that instead of sending a daily test signal, the digi wasnt seeing the 'kiss-off' from the r…

It is a well known truism that any alarm fiited 40 miles from home is going to be the one with the,never heard of problem Customer phones up , hey great alarm , nice tidy job , well done , however when the postman rung the door bell the alarm went off (this is a wind up ) demonstration followed sure as hell it did got to the house , discovered patio door viper triggering with door bell ,it was a hard percussive bell , so changed to softer avon calling type still no joy ran a screened cable along the flor to the viper and tried again, that cured it so had to run it screened permanent now how many vipers and how many door bells have you in your books , has any on…

A long time ago the company i worked for decided to take on "Youth opportunity Scheme" (YOPS) Bad Idea. Anyway it was my turn to take this lad out with me he had been with the company 2 weeks and i had'nt heard any bad feedback from other engineers, we were off to a very up-market house where i had previously been working,(gorg 18 year old daughter) so was keen to impress. I asked this YOP to feed a cable to the rear lounge door. and left him to it, about half an hour later i went in to the lounge to see how he was getting on. WOW there he was spaced out on the sofa he had brought his own "stuff". I had to drag him out of the house into the car where i left him while…

I recently did a survey of a medium detached property in a small village in Sussex. The prospective customer spent the whole time of my survey on the phone to his insurance company, making a claim on an accident with his car (top of the range BMW)telling them numorous time that he was paying an additional three hundred pounds a month for the extras. When he finaly got of the phone and we started to disscuss his security. We talked about cable runs and the fact of him not wanting an external sounder up due to the building being listed, and the need of panic buttons as he often worked away leaving his wife and daughters . I assumed that he would want remote signalling a…

I am working for a company that has shops (please ignore my logon name) our installers instaled a new system 8 weeks ago, that had been attacked, first activation intruder was sent, but no confirmation, keyholing company attended site, reset blaming moving curtains, 40 mins later second intruder, no confirmation this time some scrot entered via the back door, booted the upstaires office door open and emptied it. My question: the alarm company say it was a faulty DIGI only the confirm channel was broken ??????, has any one elese had this, its a CSL one if that makes sence. I think they programmed it wrong or left the link out, I have requested the entire log from both p…