Not all Central Stations are created equal…
At a bare minimum it should be UL Listed.
CSAA Five Diamond rating certifies central stations that are committed to the highest training standards in the central station monitoring industry
http://www.csaaul.org/ListFiveDiamondsCentralStations.htm
For a detailed comparison of Central Stations, see:
http://www.diysecurityforum.com/index.php?topic=31287.0
CSAA five diamond list was moved to http://csaaintl.org/csaa-five-diamond-central-stations/ - but I don’t see Surety?
Here is the central station used by SuretyCAM
Ah, cool thx Rive!
It’s on this page:
http://csaaintl.org/members/proprietary-members
Since we’re a Co-op we’re listed as a proprietary member instead of a commercial central station.
It's on this page:http://csaaintl.org/members/proprietary-members
Since we’re a Co-op we’re listed as a proprietary member instead of a commercial central station.
Monitoring America CO-OP is listed on the CSAA 5 Diamond Central Station page (that’s what Jlkinsel wanted to see)…
Are they reliable?
I won’t name names but I have been using a company who puts out a lot of commercials that seem to indicate their station operators will call me within seconds of the alarm going off like they were watching from a van across the street.
I have not found this to be true.
The two times that I set my system off, Surety’s central station did contact me in seconds.
The only speed requirement for UL listing is that on average they call in 60 seconds or less. This allows for a lot of deviation between listed companies. While we do not guarantee a response time, our average response time to date is 12 seconds. We staff a higher ratio of operators to customers which makes quicker responses possible.
Ryan gave some more detailed information a while back in this post.
Will chime in as I’ve been a customer for a while, now - when the alarm has been set off (all my fault, so far) my phone’s ringing within 30 seconds. Any time I’ve called/emailed questions (or on this forum) support has been quite good.