While burglar alarms are a valuable way of deterring potential thieves from targeting your home, it seems they can get a little confused about what counts as a break-in, with more than a quarter of you reporting that an insect had triggered an alarm.
Read on to find out how you can minimize false alarms.
If you’re considering buying a alarm, find out how alarm owners rate big brands, including ADT, Honeywell and Response, in our guide to the best and worst burglar alarms.
What happens when your burglar alarm goes off, whether or not it’s a false alarm, partly depends on what type of alarm you have.
For these alarms, you pay a monthly or yearly fee to an alarm monitoring company, which will be notified when it is triggered.
A small percentage of the people we asked have had as many as five false alarms in the last year.
If you have a monitoring contract in which the police are notified when your alarm goes off, three false alarms can mean you’re struck off the police register and they won’t respond again.