So my house just got broken into

[Delphinus]

Geez, that's scary.

One argument about the cost of an alarm service: it usually (always? not sure) results in a reduction in your household insurance. Not enough to completely balance it out, but hey it helps.

The large non-local companies still contract local guard services. Realistically, it doesn't matter where the monitoring is handled. But an alarm company wouldn't be worth their salt if they didn't have a local presence even if they're a huge multinational...