Will police respond to my unmonitored alarm?

Generally no — NZ Police don’t typically respond to unverified alarms because most are false. A monitored alarm with phone or video verification raises response priority. For most commercial sites, a guard-response service is faster than waiting for police.

How much does monitoring cost in NZ?

Basic residential: $25–$40/month. Standard commercial: $45–$85. With guard response: $80–$200+. High-security regulated industry: $200+. The hardware is a separate one-off cost.

Can I switch monitoring providers later?

Yes. The alarm panel doesn’t care which monitoring station receives the events — we can re-program in an hour or so. Your contract with the provider may have its own terms; check before switching.

Monitored vs Unmonitored Alarms: Who's Watching When It Goes Off

Every alarm system has the same problem: when it goes off at 2am on a Tuesday, who actually does something about it? Modern panels push notifications to your phone instantly — but if you’re asleep, on a plane, or just on Do Not Disturb, the notification doesn’t help. This post walks through the self-monitored vs third-party-monitored decision the way we work through it on a real site visit.

Up front: Comsys installs alarm hardware. We do not run a 24/7 monitoring centre. Where the discussion below recommends third-party monitoring, that’s a service from a specialist NZ provider; we set up the comms path and the account hand-off, but the contract is between you and the provider.

What “monitored” actually means

An alarm system on its own is local: when triggered, it sirens, strobes, and (on modern panels) sends a push notification to your phone. Whether anyone responds depends on you, your neighbours, or whoever sees the notification. Monitored means the panel additionally reports each event to a 24/7 control room. The control room verifies the event (often by phoning you), and if it’s genuine, dispatches a guard or notifies police.

Self-monitored: how it actually plays out

Modern alarm panels (Paradox, Ajax, Bosch, Inner Range) push instant notifications to your phone with full event detail (which sensor, what time, what type of event). If you’re available and able to act, this works well: you check the live CCTV from the same app, decide if it’s real, and call police or a neighbour as appropriate.

Where it falls down: you’re asleep, you’re overseas, you’ve got phone notifications muted in a meeting, your phone is dead, you’re running a multi-site business and one alarm is one of dozens of events you’re trying to handle. Self-monitored relies on you being available, fast, and decisive at every triggering event.

Third-party monitored: how it actually plays out

The panel reports each event to a 24/7 control room (e.g. ADT, Stanley, FIRST Security, Onyx, Chubb, regional providers). Within typically 60–180 seconds:

Operator receives the event with site info, sensor location, and account contact list.
Operator phones the primary contact (usually you) to verify whether the alarm is genuine. Sometimes verification is by video clip from integrated CCTV.
If unverified or confirmed real, operator dispatches according to your account’s procedure: notify police, dispatch a guard, or both.

For most sites, dispatch happens within 5–15 minutes for guard response and immediately for police notification. The whole process is logged and time-stamped.

The response-time question

Police don’t typically respond to unverified alarms in NZ — most are false. Most insurers know this. So the question becomes: when something genuine happens, how fast does someone competent get to the site?

Scenario	Typical response time
Self-monitored, you’re awake and available	Immediate notification, action depends on you
Self-monitored, you’re asleep / overseas	Indeterminate — could be hours or never
Monitored, basic residential	2–5 min to phone-verify, police notified if unverified
Monitored with video verification	1–3 min to confirm via CCTV, faster police priority
Monitored with guard response	Guard on-site in 15–45 min depending on location

When self-monitoring is the right answer

Residential where you’re usually home or available.
Low-stakes sites where neighbours or visible siren is enough deterrent.
Sites where you have your own response (live-on-site staff, on-call manager).
Smaller commercial where the asset value doesn’t justify the ongoing fee.

When third-party monitoring is the right answer

Your insurer requires it (common for retail, hospitality, jewellery, regulated-goods).
You travel often or have multi-site operations.
The site has high-value stock, cash, or critical equipment.
Police-dispatch priority matters (verified monitoring raises priority).
You want documented response-time SLAs for compliance or audit.

The cost trade-off

Self-monitoring is free; the cost is your time and reliability. Third-party monitoring is $25–$200+/month depending on tier (residential basic vs commercial with guard response). For a typical Auckland small commercial site, $50–$85/month buys 24/7 phone verification and police notification — about $600–$1,000 a year, less than the excess on a typical burglary claim.

For high-stakes sites (late-night hospitality, jewellery, electronics) the $150–$200/month tier with guard response is usually the cleaner answer because it removes the police-dispatch dependency.

Hybrid: self + monitoring

Many sites run both: monitored for the rare 2am event, plus self-monitoring app notifications for day-to-day visibility. The monitoring contract is your safety net; the app gives you operational awareness. Most modern panels support both simultaneously without extra cost on the hardware side.

Common mistakes

Self-monitoring a high-stakes site. The week you go on holiday is the week of the incident.
Out-of-date monitoring contact list. Update every six months.
Single-path comms on a monitored site. Use IP + 4G dual-path so one failure doesn’t kill the connection.
Bundled hardware-and-monitoring contracts. The hardware is paid for in the monthly fee at multiples of its cost. Buy the hardware separately.

Monitored vs unmonitored alarms: who’s watching when it goes off