I had a consultant from a security company come by today to talk about activating my alarm system with them (so it would be monitored).  She seemed to think that my current system would do fine and they would just need to do some maintenance and reset the codes.  She quoted a pretty good monthly rate and I asked about the length of the term.  I was told that they only did three year contracts. 

Lately I’ve decided that I don’t want to enter into long term contracts if I can avoid it.  My new rule-of-thumb is that a company will have to have a very good reason to get me to sign anything with more than a one year term.  I understand that this will often mean that I may pay more per month, but I’m willing to do that to avoid being tied down.  I think my main concern is that if I don’t like their service there is no way to get out of the contract.

It appears that three year contracts are standard in the industry.  That’s too bad, because I don’t trust any of the companies to sign that kind of contract unless there are performance guarantees (which none of them have).