What If You Set Off A Pet Sitting Customers Home Alarm?

Filed Under Pet Sitting Business Tips |

What If WednesdayWhat if you arrive at a pet sitting visit, walk into the house and the alarm goes off?  What if you you can’t get it to shut off?

What do you do?

This situation happened to one of my pet sitters a few years ago. She set off the customers home alarm and despite her best attempts could not get it to shut off.  The police arrived to investigate and she had to explain the situation to them. She had a signed copy of our pet sitting contract to verify that she was indeed caring for the pets.  She talked to the alarm company and they shut off the system.  It all ended well but it was a very harrowing experience for her as you can imagine.

Most monitored home alarms do give you the ability to cancel the monitoring alert if you know the right buttons to push so that the alarm company does not call if you accidently trigger the alarm upon entering the home.  Our home alarm system requires you to enter the code and press the cancel button. 

If you do trigger an alarm and do get it shut off but can’t cancel the alert, typically the monitoring company will call the customers home phone within 10 minutes and ask you for a pass code. If you are able to confirm the password they will not send out the police to investigate and cancel the alert.

Preventative measures

As with most situations in life - when dealing with home alarm systems prevention is better than cure. To avoid this type of situation make sure that at the initial customer interview that you familiarize yourself well with the alarm system and ask the customer if you can practive de-activating and activating their system. 

Make sure you make note of the code that you need to enter when you arrive at the home and also ask them to provide their password just in case the monitoring company should call.  If they are not comfortable giving you their code and password most alarm companies will allow the home owner to set up a temporary code and password for you.

An even better precaution is to ask the homeowner to call their alarm system provider and let them know that they will have a pet sitter visiting their home while they are away. Get them to give their alarm company your name and contact details just in case they need to contact you. 

It can also be a good precaution for the homeowners to alert the local police that they will be away and that they organized for you to be entering their home.  Some neighbourhoods have police patrols and the police may check in on the home if they notice unusual activity.  Make sure that your sitters have a signed copy of the customer contract just in case they need to prove to police that they have permission to access the home.

Many homes today have alarm systems installed. If you don’t have an alarm sytem and are not familiar with their use it is a good idea to get aquainted with their operation. As you gain more experience they will become second nature.  Don’t let your guard down - make sure you collect the alarm company information and passwords - you never know when you wil need them!



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Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Ark Lady on December 4, 2008 6:22 pm

    An additional thought to consider is making sure any motion detection is shut off. I remember one client whose security left me a note–the client did not inform me about the motion detection and the cat kept setting it off.

    Although we had contracts, I always had a separate veterinary care authorization form and a security system info sheet.

  2. Danielle Chonody on December 4, 2008 10:08 pm

    Motion detection is a problem if pets are left in the house. I haven’t run into this problem - most clients instruct me how to turn this off as they typically leave it disabled. Thanks for this reminder!

    Did you file the veterinary care form with the clients vet office - or just keep it on file? What was included in your security sytstem info sheet?

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