FAQs

In most cases we respond to an alarm in accordance with Australian Standard AS 4421-1996 Guards & Patrols which is 35 minutes.

We can’t ever assume that any alarm is false. We treat every alarm from your security system as a potential security breach. Sometimes thieves may deliberately trigger repeated alarms from the same area in your premises hoping that a less diligent security provider might eventually ignore them. We’ll only disregard an alarm signal from your premises upon your explicit instructions (verbal for temporary override/written for on-going circumstances). You may wish to consider a Video Monitoring Service, which allows our operators to remotely view your site when the alarm is activated, assisting them in verifying alarm triggers, and potentially reducing responses to what turn out to be false alarms.

Our electronic Alarm Response Docket lists 9 event-types which may result in a response. One of these events will be selected on each docket you receive. In addition to intruder, fire or industrial alarms, the following are the most common events which may also indicate a breach to the security of your premises:

• Late to Close – your alarm is still unarmed after your closing schedule and your response plan requires us to attend. Your response plan is only actioned if we haven’t received a call from a contact, or have been unable to contact anyone on site.
• Out-of-Hours Entry – your alarm system is disarmed outside your scheduled hours. A response is only despatched if we haven’t had a call from a contact, or have been unable to contact anyone on site and your response plan authorises it.
• Isolation – one or more of your detection devices haven’t activated when your security system has been armed. Common causes include doors/roller shutters that may not have been secured correctly.
• Let In/Out, Patrol Report and Random Patrol Request event-types are services provided at your request. Please contact us for more information.

Alarm Response Dockets are electronically delivered to an email address of your choice.

The standard response charge includes the patrol officers attendance and the first 10 minutes spent on site. An additional charge per minute applies if the patrol officer is required to wait for longer. Our maximum waiting time is 30 minutes after which the patrol officer can be replaced by a guard upon request. We may agree to extend this in exceptional circumstances. Public Holiday surcharge also applicable.

We treat all “late to close” (meaning your security system hasn’t been armed within your schedule) and “out-of-hours-entries” (meaning the system has been disarmed outside your schedule) as exceptions. This is because a lot of theft is internal. When we receive one of these events, we’ll attempt to contact the premises in accordance with your response plan using the site numbers you’ve provided.

Sometimes we can’t contact your site due to problems such as night switches, voice mail, incorrect in-dials, cancelled phone lines or mobile numbers. If we can’t make contact with anyone on-site, your nominated Alarm Response Plan (see below) then comes into effect.

If you want to operate a schedule it’s important that you get your staff to notify us when exceptions occur by calling the Monitoring Centre on 1300 884 543 or 02 9725 1566. New Zealand customers can contact us on 09 887 0362.

A member of the Monitoring Team will notify your nominated contacts immediately. Once we’ve contacted you we can assist you with contacting the police if you want them to attend. Most Australian police services require an owner or representative of the business to personally make this request and expect you to be present when they attend. We’re unable to directly make that request for you.

If you’d like to make temporary arrangements for the safeguarding of the property we can also assist.

If we’re unable to contact you and you haven’t authorised us to place a guard on-site, we’re unable to take any further action.

Firstly, check your phone to see if you’ve missed any calls or voice mails from us. You can also speak with our Monitoring Centre on 1300 884 543 to see if there were any failed attempts to contact you, as every call, attempted call and voice mail is recorded and logged. Please note that the Monitoring Centre cannot agree to or issue credits.

If you don’t think we contacted you get in touch with our Accounts department on 02 8787 7562 or [email protected] and they’ll email you a ‘Request for Credit’ form. Once you’ve completed and returned the form we’ll investigate your enquiry. If we haven’t contacted you as agreed in your response plan we’ll issue a credit. If you’d like to amend your response plan at this time we can organise that as well.

Please note that some inquiries take longer to investigate than others including queries relating to multiple responses or involving special detection devices such as refrigeration, smoke and heat detectors.

If you’re on-site and anticipate working past your closing time, please ring 1300 884 543 with your password and be ready to advise your estimated departure time. We’ll update your arming schedule so our system makes sure that you arm by that time.

If you go to your premises and disarm outside your scheduled arming & disarming times please ring 1300 884 543 with your password ready immediately after you’ve disarmed so that we can update your schedule and authorise the entry.

Please note that you may incur response charges if you have arming & disarming schedules in place and don’t contact or advise us of schedule changes. If we attempt to contact you and those calls go unanswered and you’ve authorised us to respond to all events we’ll send a response vehicle.

You can make changes to your arming & disarming schedule by calling 1300 884 543 or emailing the Monitoring Centre at [email protected]

Please note that arming & disarming schedules aren’t mandatory and you can remove them from your service plan if you wish to do so.

You can choose one of the following standard alarm response plans:

• Plan 1 – you authorise us to respond to all events without calling your nominated contacts. Alarm Response charges may apply.
• Plan 2 – we’ll contact your contacts to attend, but you authorise us to respond to all events if none of your contacts are contactable.
• Plan 3 – we’ll contact your contacts to attend your premises, but if none of your contacts is contactable we will NOT respond because we don’t have your authorisation to do so. By selecting this plan you acknowledge that such action may be contrary to your insurers requirements.

If our standard response plans don’t meet your needs please contact us to discuss a feature request. Feature requests are customised action plans built for specific scenarios including refrigeration, medical, smoke, heat and duress alarms that require special handling. Charges apply for custom programming and testing. Additional monitoring charges may also apply.

We can’t ever assume that any alarm is false. We treat every alarm from your security system as a potential security breach. Sometimes thieves may deliberately trigger repeated alarms from the same area in your premises hoping that a less diligent security provider might eventually ignore them. We’ll only disregard an alarm signal from your premises upon your explicit instructions (verbal for temporary override/written for on-going circumstances). You may wish to consider a Video Monitoring Service, which allows our operators to remotely view your site when the alarm is activated, assisting them in verifying alarm triggers, and potentially reducing responses to what turn out to be false alarms.

Our electronic Alarm Response Docket lists 9 event-types which may result in a response. One of these events will be selected on each docket you receive. In addition to intruder, fire or industrial alarms, the following are the most common events which may also indicate a breach to the security of your premises:

• Late to Close – your alarm is still unarmed after your closing schedule and your response plan requires us to attend. Your response plan is only actioned if we haven’t received a call from a contact, or have been unable to contact anyone on site.
• Out-of-Hours Entry – your alarm system is disarmed outside your scheduled hours. A response is only despatched if we haven’t had a call from a contact, or have been unable to contact anyone on site and your response plan authorises it.
• Isolation – one or more of your detection devices haven’t activated when your security system has been armed. Common causes include doors/roller shutters that may not have been secured correctly.
• Let In/Out, Patrol Report and Random Patrol Request event-types are services provided at your request. Please contact us for more information.

Alarm Response Dockets are electronically delivered to an email address of your choice.

A member of the Monitoring Team will notify your nominated contacts immediately. Once we’ve contacted you we can assist you with contacting the police if you want them to attend. Most Australian police services require an owner or representative of the business to personally make this request and expect you to be present when they attend. We’re unable to directly make that request for you.

If you’d like to make temporary arrangements for the safeguarding of the property we can also assist.

If we’re unable to contact you and you haven’t authorised us to place a guard on-site, we’re unable to take any further action.

If you’re on-site and anticipate working past your closing time, please ring 1300 884 543 with your password and be ready to advise your estimated departure time. We’ll update your arming schedule so our system makes sure that you arm by that time.

If you go to your premises and disarm outside your scheduled arming & disarming times please ring 1300 884 543 with your password ready immediately after you’ve disarmed so that we can update your schedule and authorise the entry.

Please note that you may incur response charges if you have arming & disarming schedules in place and don’t contact or advise us of schedule changes. If we attempt to contact you and those calls go unanswered and you’ve authorised us to respond to all events we’ll send a response vehicle.

You can make changes to your arming & disarming schedule by calling 1300 884 543 or emailing the Monitoring Centre at [email protected]

Please note that arming & disarming schedules aren’t mandatory and you can remove them from your service plan if you wish to do so.