What affects the cost of vehicle security?

We get asked for a price before we know anything about the car, and we understand why. But two identical systems can take very different amounts of work to fit, so here is what actually moves the number.

What drives the cost

The system itself. A basic hidden immobiliser and a full alarm with tracking and an LCD remote are different products. This is the part most people expect.

How long the car takes. Some vehicles are straightforward. Others need half the interior trim out to reach the right loom, and that is time. Two cars on the same driveway can differ by hours.

Where things have to be hidden. A good install puts the unit somewhere a thief will not find quickly. On some cars that is easy. On others it takes real work, and it is exactly the work you are paying for.

Whether anything is already fitted. Previous installs, particularly poor ones, sometimes have to be sorted out first.

How many systems at once. Doing an alarm and a dash cam in one visit costs less than two separate visits, because most of the time is in getting the trim off and back on.

What does not change the price

Where you live, within our patch. We do not charge more for a longer drive across the North West.

How expensive your car is. We quote on the work, not on what you paid for the vehicle.

Why we do not publish a price list

Two reasons, and neither is evasive.

The first is that a headline price is almost always wrong for your specific car, and a number that changes when we see the vehicle is worse than no number.

The second is that we would rather find out what you actually need first. Quite often the honest answer is a smaller system than people expected, and a price list encourages you to pick before anyone has asked what you drive.

If the cheaper system does the job on your car, we will tell you. That conversation is impossible to have with a price list.

How to avoid overpaying

Say what you are actually worried about. “I do not want it driven off the drive” leads somewhere different to “I keep tools in the back”. The answer to the first might be considerably cheaper.

Do not buy features you will not open. Remote start and full telemetry are genuinely useful to some people and never touched by others. Be honest about which you are.

Get everything done in one visit. If you know you want a dash cam eventually, doing it alongside the alarm saves a second lot of labour.

Ask what the install involves. A quote that seems cheap may be a unit cable tied under the dash where the first person to look will find it. That is not security, it is decoration.

Getting a real number

Send us three things: the make, the model and the year. That is enough for us to tell you what fits, roughly how long it takes, and what it will cost.

We will also tell you if you do not need us at all. That happens more often than you would expect, and we would rather say so than take the work.