About MasterGuard Fire Protection
Master Guard fire protection has been around sine 1971. They put on free seminars teaching about fire safety and the dangers of a home fire. The information they share is great and I would highly recommend attending one of there seminars. Perhaps one of there best tactics is offering free dinner at a nice restaurant. They will tell you "leave your wallet at home" all you have to do is listen to a presentation on fire safety.Its a great deal. Part of there presentation talks about smoke detectors and fire alarms. They use some very real stories and examples of the tragedy of home fires. Point blank, they will not say this, but they will instill fear in you and later try to use that fear to sell you there system. They will rant and rave about there smoke detectors and how superior they are. They will talk about how most smoke detectors are "made in china" and are cheap. Would you want cheap "made in China" smoke detectors protecting your family? At one of these seminars they will not try to sell you anything, absolutely no pressure. They will not even discuss even prices, even if you ask. They will however try to visit you in the next day or so to go over your families need and set you up with a custom fire protection system for your home. The main reason for the quick visit is they want to use that fear from the not before to sell you a system. They now it will fade after a few days.
MasterGuard Comes to Your Home
So its been a day or two since you attended a MasterGuard seminar. A sales rep. usually not the presenter from the night before, but it may be will come to your home. They will discuss the previous night, ask you what you thought , what you learned. They may bring up a story or two about a family that saw death as the result of a fire and not being prepared. The sales rep will ask to walk around your home to see what your family needs for a "full protection system". This usually consists of a smoke detector in each bedroom, in your main living rooms and halls, as well as heat detectors in each bathroom, kitchen, laundry room, and attic. They have information on why each room needs to have an alarm. Next comes the cost. They will remind you this is for "full protection" and you can go with a lower system. By full protection they simply mean how many alarms, not quality of alarms. The alarms work out to be the same cost for the smoke detectors and heat alarms. Prices may vary slightly and I will discuss that in the next section. If you are blown away with the price, they will quickly offer you a "partial protection package" typically this will be eliminating the heat alarms in the bathroom, and perhaps consolidating some of the smoke detectors. Usually they offer a free alarm if you buy at least 4. If you try to talk them down to only a few alarms, they probably wont sell to you. They will tell you how they have not lost a life yet with a home that had there system installed. If they were to sell you less then what you needed and you had a fire and a life was lost there track record would be ruined. These guys have a quick answer for any question.
Price and Why so Much?
Here is what you really want to know, how much do these amazing devices cost? Well I'm sure the price varies by $20 plus or minus, but our cost worked out to be about $350.00 per alarm. Yes that's right, over $300.00 per alarm. So why so much? Its simple. Do you think that free dinner for all those people was really free, or that the presenter was putting on this seminar just to share free information on fire safety. They are running a business and need to cover there huge overhead. So is there price to high? If your looking at it as simply buying a smoke detector then yes, but for a profitable business I'm sure there numbers are in line. I for one didn't want to pay that much. So I did some research. That's what I'm sharing here.
Who is Gentex?
Gentex has been making fire alarms for commercial and residential use for many years. And guess what, Gentex makes the MasterGuard alarms for MasterGuard under the Master Guard label. You can buy these alarms for a fraction of the price under the Gentex label. I will post a few links below with sites where you can purchase these alarms. There is a catch. All Gentex label alarms are hard wired and need to be hooked up to your electricity. The MasterGuard alarm made by Gentex that is battery operated is only made under the MasterGuaard label and must be purchased through MasterGuard. So at a fraction of the cost you can buy the Gentex alarms and pay a electrician to install them and still save money. You can guess which I did. The cost of the Gentex hard wire fire alarms is about $50.00 per alarm. Here are a few links to sites that sell the alarms. Good luck with your system.
http://www.protectiontech.com/
http://www.myfiremonitor.com/Gentex-c1316-pg4268.htm
