Many years back, so long that I can’t remember exact dates, Bob and I were forced by our insurance company to get an alarm system. No alarm system, no reasonably priced insurance. Bob determined that the reduced price of the insurance would offset the additional price of the alarm system so we took the plunge. I write this because while it is comforting to know that if we have an emergency (Break In, Fire, or Radon Gas) an alarm will ring, the truth is the system has served as an annoyance more than a comfort. The alarms have gone off for a variety of reasons other than a genuine emergency. Wind blowing a badly closed door opens, someone leaving the house and forgetting to disarm the alarms, burning food in the kitchen and low batteries are just a few of the examples. This means when we hear the alarms sounding we usually think why is that goddamn system going off now.

The other day, we heard a chirping noise. We ignored it. Then we heard a few heart stopping blares, then back to the chirping. Much to our chagrin, we paused our television program that, by the way, was getting really good, to search for a reason. We discovered that the batteries in the fire alarm were low. We changed the batteries. The chirping noise stopped, the heart stopping blare stopped, so, problem solved. Or not. The warning light on our console now was telling us that the alarm system was tampered with. Initially, we thought it was a simple matter of acknowledging the error and the system would reset. It didn’t reset. We tried numerous times. Nothing worked. Left with no other options, we called the alarm company’s customer support.

You know the routine, phone tree, press button 1 if you want, and after a minute or two we were connected to a nice person who tried to help us. Before we could talk to the agent, we had to verify that we were indeed the owners of the house. Bob gave our profile information and the secret code that confirms our ownership and allows the tech person to talk with us about our problem. The tech support person suspected that I hadn’t screwed the alarm all the way back into the ceiling when changing the batteries. I get on the ladder, notice that there was indeed a slight gap between the apparatus and the ceiling. Good, maybe she was right. I tried to screw it in. It doesn’t move. I twist, I turn, the apparatus doesn’t move. Bob tries. He, too, is unable to move the alarm. It is a very delicate mechanism and we are afraid that we are going to break the alarm as we tug, pull, twist and curse it to no avail. We let the agent know our concerns and she tells us it would be better off if we didn’t break it because then we would have to buy it. We agreed with her.

We were actually happy customers now except for the error notice on the console. Bob told her that the alarm seems to be working as there were no more chirping noises or heart stopping blares from the alarm. All we wanted was for the noises to stop. The noises have stopped, so we were happy to end the call there. She informed us that the noised could return after we end the call. Bob asked her to just turn off the alarm in the central system. This was, for some reason, impossible. She tried to explain. I still can’t understand her explanation but Bob seemed to. I deferred to his judgement. She told us that we need to disconnect the system’s battery to insure that the noises would stay stopped. Bob goes to where the alarm’s central system is in our house. She told him to look for the green battery. Bob doesn’t see a green battery and, on closer inspection, the battery he does find with the alarm system doesn’t appear to be connected to the system at all.

Seeing that this going nowhere fast, she tells us so schedule a tech person to come out and fix our system. Bob, thinking logically, I believe, asked her to schedule us. She can’t schedule service call, she handles customer support problems. She needed to transfer us to the scheduling department which she kindly did. The man who answers asked us for the profile information and the secret code that identifies Bob as the owner of the house. Bob explained the problem again. The scheduler was stumped because he was at a central number and this was an urgent matter. If he were to schedule through the central scheduling system it would take a week or more before he could get an open date for someone to come out to us. He said we needed to contact someone at local tech support in order to get faster service. He doesn’t understand why the central tech person transferred us to central scheduling in the first place. It would have been easier for her to have contacted the local tech person who would then call us. Why didn’t she take care of this? Bob, unfortunately, can’t explain the tech person thinking. The scheduler tells us he needs to send us back to the tech team so they can schedule someone locally. Bob asks will he have to repeat the problem. The man assures him that he won’t.

But Bob did have to give the new tech person his personal profile details and the secret code which showed he was the owner of the house. Once supplied, the new tech person was stumped because the scheduling agent sent us to the wrong company. Apparently, the parent company had gobbled up a bunch of other alarm companies so it could become the biggest alarm company in the whole damn world. So while she worked for the parent company technically, the different companies still stored their information in different computer systems. She didn’t have access to our information. She was perplexed on why the man would send us to her in the first place. Bob couldn’t help her with an answer.

She transferred us to another very nice woman who, after Bob supplies his personal details and his secret code, is from the right alarm company and can help us. She reads us the notes the other agents have been taking so we have some assurance that people have been listening to us and documenting the information. She has to notify a local tech person to schedule a visit. They will have to talk to us because they will need to squeeze us in between the already scheduled customers and will need to talk to us in person in order to do this. She tells us that this usually takes no more than 24 hours for them to return a call.

What about the chirping noise and the heart stopping blare which we haven’t heard since starting this marathon phone call and the only reason we have pursued this matter further was we wanted to make sure these noises were stopped. She didn’t really know for sure. It could work fine until the local tech person came to reset. Or the chirping and the heart stopping blare could resume after we hung up. She told us to call back if the noises began again. Bob assured her we would.

The within 24 hour response came 70 hours later. The return call was from the central tech support and not the local tech support. This was baffling since the whole reason for us asking local tech support to call us was because the central scheduling department told us it was an urgent matter and we would get a much faster service call locally. But, never mind. She then asked if we could wait a few more tiny days. Since the chirping and the heart stopping blare were quiet for now, we could. It is, however, amusing to think that if the original scheduler, who didn’t want us to wait a week for an appointment, had only scheduled an appointment when we first called him, we would have probably gotten faster service than we were going to get by waiting for the local tech support to squeeze us into their schedule. But, yet again, never mind.