09/08/2022
Hello everyone, it has been a while since we posted to Facebook, but I believe this is worth sharing.
Early in the morning of January 28th this year our store was broken into. At the request of the police, we did not publish any information on this to assist the police with their investigation. There are no charges yet, but we do have a very good idea who did this, and we appreciate the great work of London Police Services.
Our systems worked very well in delaying the entrance to the building. The alarm was going off for 3 1/2 minutes before they were able to enter. Since this incident, we have improved our systems further making it significantly harder, if not impossible, to enter as they did.
As a rule of thumb, security professionals usually quote a five-minute timeline from when an alarm is triggered to police arrival. To the credit of London Police Service, they arrived within 90 seconds of the first phone call.
This is where the story gets interesting. The phone call the police responded to was from a neighbour in a nearby apartment who was calling about the alarm that woke him up and had been ringing for about 4 minutes.
THE SECURITY COMPANY MONITORING THE ALARM DID NOT CALL THE POLICE UNTIL 25 MINUTES AFTER THE ALARM WAS TRIGGERED!
If the security company did their job, the police would have been able to stop the burglars before they even entered the building. The security company called 20 minutes AFTER the police had called us.
The company that originally installed our alarm and access control system is GUNNEBO. We have had numerous issues with the company since our original installation, but nothing on the scale of this. We have been paying Gunnebo $480 / year for our alarm monitoring ($40/month, pretty standard for commercial monitoring). After the incident, we spoke with Gunnebo asking for an explanation of the utter failure of the service we paid for. After 6 weeks of them giving us the run around, we were provided with this email:
From: Nolan, Chris
Sent: March 11, 2022 1:19 PM
To: Daniel
Cc: Ross, Kevin
Subject: RE: Gunnebo Follow Up
Hello Daniel,
Gunnebo Canada has concluded our investigation into API’s alarm response during the night of Jan. 28 2022 for the System installed at 475 Highbury Ave N, London.
It appears that initial alarm signals were transmitted at approx. 4:17am ET from the System located at 475 Highbury Ave N, London Facility and were received at API’s Monitoring Facility. API’s Monitoring Facility continued to receive additional alarm signals produced by additional alarms until approx. 4:40am ET. At approx. 4:42am ET API’s Monitoring Facility contacted Brad Small and verified the alarm signals they had received. At approx. 4:54am ET API’s Monitoring Facility received signals that the System at 475 Highbury Ave N, London had been disarmed.
Gunnebo Canada concludes that the System located at 475 Highbury Ave N, London performed correctly the night of Jan. 28 2022. Burglary events were detected correctly and those signals were communicated correctly to API’s Monitoring Facility.
Gunnebo Canada further concludes that API’s Monitoring Facility made every reasonable effort to notify emergency personnel of alarm signals the night of Jan. 28 2022. The length of time between first receiving alarm signals from the System located at 475 Highbury Ave N, London and API’s Monitoring Facility verification of those signals was a result of the total volume of signals received by API’s Monitoring Facility at that time.
Please note: API’s Monitoring Facility are not operated by Gunnebo and the personnel operating those Monitoring Facilities are not the agents of Gunnebo. As a result, our conclusions are based on information provided by the System installed at 475 Highbury Ave N, London and API’s Monitoring Facility.
Please let me know if the above provides sufficient explanation on the Jan. 28 2022 incident. If not, let me know how else I can be of assistance and we’ll go from there.
Speak to you then.
Regards,
Chris Nolan, MBA, CSP
National Sales Manager, Canada
Mobile (416) 574-7381 | Tel (905) 595 4140
In summary, Gunnebo is blaming the company they outsourced the service to, API. They are also claiming that API is not operated by Gunnebo or acting as an agent, and therefore, not their problem. Strangely, all the invoicing we have from Gunnebo for monitoring services has no mention of API, just Gunnebo monitoring services. Also, any phone contact we have made with the monitoring service over the years has been answered as “GUNNEBO”.
For the past 6 months we have been pushing Gunnebo to make it right with us. We have lost a $10,000 deductible, over $100,000 of value in the insurance shortfall as well as significant time and internal repairs. To date, we have been offered a settlement of $48 (!!), which represents 10% of the fee they charged for the monitoring last year.
While we are not done with Gunnebo yet, we would like to spread our story to anyone who currently uses Gunnebo or is shopping for a security partner. It is our opinion that they should be avoided at all costs.
Gunnebo Canada Inc
Gunnebo Safe Storage
CIBC
TD
RBC
Scotiabank
BMO Financial Group
Brink's
GardaWorld
G4S
