When I bought my new place in West Seattle in September ’06 it came with a built-in security system (with $25 per month monitoring by Puget Sound Alarm) and I thought it was extraneous but I had no choice as it was part of the purchase and sale agreement. I had lived all over, including in New York City, and had never had even a break-in attempt.
But wouldn’t you know it, only six months after I moved to West Seattle I flew off to New Zealand and carelessly neglected to put my lights on timers. Towards the end of a two week trip the alarm company called me and told me someone tried to pry open one of my bedroom windows. The monitoring company called me and then dispatched the police. But it was probably the audible alarm that scared them off.
I wrote out the alarm monitoring checks with a little more enthusiasm after that.
