Everyone Should Read This!!

(1) Fixing 911

Ok, so what's this about? In the past couple of years the 911 system has gotten worse than ever. In the 3 counties, Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson, I would have to say that Berkeley county has the worse 911 system. I have ran into a good many problems with them and no one wants to take responsibility for anything. They want to raise your 911 fees, but they don't want to give you the service you are suppose to be getting for what you are paying right now.

I have had cases where the alarm goes off from a break in, the monitoring company calls the 911 center, then the police (county or state) never showed. The reason? 911 gave them the wrong address one time, they told me a 911 trainie canceled the call as the police got there, and twice when a pharmacy got broke into, the police were dispatched to Food Lion!!!

So what's a taxpayer to do?? Well the last time I was at a county meeting about raising the 911 fees, (of course they had the meeting at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday so nobody would go), I was only one of 4 people (non 911 employee's) and they rest of the 10 plus people were the one's who worked in the 911 system. As in firemen, police, sheriff and so on.

Needless to say, we (the people) were against the fee hike since no one was able to show as well as point out all the problems. But the Grand Pooba's of Berkeley County said, too bad, you are going to pay!

So what's my point? The next time they have a meeting, it would be nice if more people would try and show up or really complain about the time of the meetings. If your alarm goes off, it could be your life that depends on their help. The way the systems is now, good luck!

It's not so much the police I can blame, although I can for some of the problems, but most of the time it's the 911 center and their "were only human" excuses. You get a 911 address, pay fees on it 4 times! (Your land line phone has a 911 fee, your cell phone has a 911 fee, you get a bill for a 911 fee, and your property tax bill has another 911 fee on it.)

The computer system is suppose to contain all the 911 address and information, and then it's one mistake after another. I see it a lot more than most. since we have well over 300 customers, and the 911 problems really stand out on this end. By the way, when I asked the Martinsburg Journal to have a reporter call me so we can get this out, and maybe make some changes before things got worse, they told me, it was too controversial and they did nothing!

(2) Read The Book

Well, over the years I have seen a lot of people spend good money on security equipment, alarms, cameras, DVR's, & such, and never take the time to really know what they have. They don't learn how to use it, or when there is trouble with it, they usually don't know for weeks because they won't read a half a sheet of paper to get the most of what they bought.

I have 54 customers that bought a DVR camera system, only 1 knows how to use it. Everyone else loses their book, or tip sheet that I made and calls me to come over and pull the video off of it for the police when a crime occurs.

I don't mind that, it's just that with the price of gas and cost of everything else, I have to pass it on when I leave the bill. People could save a lot of money if they just took the time to play with their equipment a bit and learn what they have.

If it's in a home, sit down with everyone and go over it so each person has a good understanding of how it works and what can cause a problem. If it's a business, go over your system with each employee that will be using it and just practice it for about 3 days, then it should be easy for everyone to understand and be able to use the equipment with no problems.