The importance of a wireless burglar alarm cannot be underestimated, and in this day and age, a lot of homeowners are much aware of the value of installing wireless security systems in their residences. Aside from protecting our families from break-ins and related property crime, burglar alarms also enable us to have immediate assistance for other types of emergency situations such as fire, carbon monoxide poisoning and other medical emergencies.

In most localities, burglar alarms and home alarm monitoring services that people buy need to be registered with the city. The registration fee for installing a home alarm can be quite substantial. In Portland this fee is thirty five dollars. For every year that the homeowner or renter renews their registration, it will cost them twenty-five dollars. Security companies have also been asked to pay a hundred dollars for initially registering their business.

You might be thinking that buying a home security system is already a big investment. Putting a registration fee on top of the initial cost for a home security system may make homeowners feel more hesitant about getting burglar alarms for their residences.

What many don’t know is that in the long run, the registration fee will actually allow homeowners to save money. This is because the purpose of the registration fees for alarm systems and monitoring is for the city to keep track of the burglar alarms in each of the citizens’ homes and be able to notify owners whenever they have alarm systems that are faulty. If a house alarm malfunctions, this can result in false alarms and/or vulnerability in times of emergencies.

Every time there is a false alarm in your home, it is costing you money. In Portland, the city charges the homeowner a hundred dollars for every false alarm that happens after three false alarms have already occurred in a year. If the false alarm is caused by a power outage or the wind, it will not be counted as a false alarm, but most are caused by faulty settings that can easily be corrected.  So if you do not register your home alarm and it malfunctions and leads to the incidence of false alarms, you are losing more money than it costs to get your systems registered for three years.

The fees for false alarms have been mandated because the response system for house alarms is the same for all cases. Because your alarm monitoring center cannot determine whether an alarm is false or not, it makes sure that the authorities are at your door in quick order. On one hand, this makes us feel very secure and confident in the knowledge that we will have immediate assistance whenever we encounter a break-in or any kind of emergency. On the other hand, you might also wonder about how much the government loses whenever there’s a false alarm. They are supposed to be looking out for our interests and safety more than anything else, but they are going to get the money back when it is wasted on false alarms.

Looking into getting alarm systems registered will help the local authorities serve and protect better, and help avoid the large fees charged for false alarms.