Terms for using this site, and what a quote from us actually is.
Short, plain and in English. The first half covers the website. The second half covers the thing people genuinely argue about later: what a written scope commits us to, and what it does not.
Scope and date
Last updated: 5 August 2026.
These terms cover this website: gothamaccesscontrolny.com, everything published on it, and the contact and quote forms. They do not govern work on a building. Work is governed by the written scope you sign, and if anything on this website ever contradicts that document, the signed document wins. A website is a description of how we work. It is not a contract, and we would rather you knew that now than found it out in an argument.
Using the site means these terms apply to you. If you disagree with them, the phone number on every page reaches the same people and none of this applies to a phone call.
Nothing on this website is an offer
Every price range, timing, specification and hardware recommendation published here exists so you can budget sensibly and know what a job involves before you spend an hour on the phone. None of it is an offer capable of being accepted, and none of it is a price for your building.
A price band on a service page is a description of what work like that has cost on buildings like yours. It is not a number we are bound to. It cannot be, because the two buildings on either side of the same street can differ by a factor of three on the same job: one has six usable conductors in a 1970s riser and a straight route to the panel; the other has four, a landmarked facade, and a lobby ceiling that has to be opened.
A contract comes into existence when three things have happened, in this order: we have surveyed the building, we have issued a written scope with a price, and you have accepted it in writing. Filling in a form does not do it. Calling does not do it. Neither does us saying “that sounds like a straightforward one” on the phone.
What a quote is
A quote from us is a document, not a number. Here is what is in it and what each part commits us to.
A written scope names, at minimum: the hardware by manufacturer and model number, every door, station, reader or camera it covers, the cable type and the route it takes, what existing equipment or cable we are reusing, what we are replacing, what we found in the building and deliberately left alone, the labor, and the price.
How long it stands
Thirty days from the date on the document, unless the document itself says otherwise. That is not a sales tactic and it is not arbitrary. It is how long the numbers underneath it can be relied on. Hardware pricing moves, and lead times move further: a controller that is four weeks out in March can be sixteen weeks out in September, and a sixteen-week lead time changes the sequencing of a job, which changes the labor, which changes the price. When a co-op board takes four months to vote, and they often do, we re-issue rather than pretend. Re-issuing is free and usually takes a day.
What it is priced against
What was visible on the day of the survey. We open what can be opened without damage, we ring out the riser, we photograph everything, and we price what we found.
Where a genuine unknown exists (a wall nobody can see behind until it is opened, a conduit whose far end cannot be traced, a ceiling void above a finished lobby), it is named in the document as an unknown, with a capped allowance next to it. That allowance is a ceiling, not an estimate. If the condition turns out to be better than the cap, you pay less. If it turns out to be worse, work stops before anything is billed: we photograph it, price it, send it to you, and you decide. Nothing gets added to an invoice that you have not approved in writing. The change order exists to protect you from a surprise, not to create one.
What a quote is not
- Not a code compliance opinion about your building. We cite the sections that govern this work and we cite them accurately, but the authority having jurisdiction decides what applies at your address. A plan examiner or an inspector can read a condition differently from us, and their reading is the one that counts.
- Not a stamped design. Where a job needs a licensed design professional’s drawings or a filing, that is a separate scope by a separate professional, and we will say so rather than quietly leave it out to make our number look better.
- Not a promise that a particular approach will be accepted. If an approach carries a real risk of being rejected, the document says so and gives you the alternative and what it costs.
- Not a substitute for a trade we do not work in. Fire alarm, monitored burglar alarm, line-voltage electrical work and locksmithing are separate licensed trades and none of them is ours. Where our work has to interface with one (a magnetic lock that must release on fire alarm, for instance), we coordinate with the contractor who holds the right credential rather than touching their panel.
- Not a fixed price for conditions nobody could see. See the allowance paragraph above. Anyone who gives you a genuinely fixed price on a pre-war building without opening anything has either padded it heavily or is planning to find the money later.
A number on the phone is not a quote
We will happily tell you what work like yours usually runs, because refusing to talk about money until someone is standing in your lobby wastes everybody’s time. But a figure given over the phone about a building nobody has walked is a guess, and it does not bind either of us. If it was not written down, it does not exist. Ask for the document.
Using this site
The short list of what you may and may not do with what is published here.
- Read it, print it, quote it. Take a page into a board meeting. Print the code sections. Quote a paragraph in a memo to your managing agent with a link back. That is what it is for and no permission is needed.
- Do not scrape it wholesale. Automated harvesting of these pages to reassemble them as somebody else’s service copy is not fair use, and it is fairly obvious when it happens because the specific numbers travel with the text.
- Do not hold yourself out as us. Do not use our name, our writing or our images to suggest you are us, work for us, or have been endorsed by us.
- Do not submit somebody else’s details. Only put a phone number or email into the form if it is yours or you are authorized to give it to us. We call the number on the form.
- Do not send building security detail through a web form. Nothing sensitive should travel through a contact form to anybody, ours included: not floor plans, not door schedules, not camera positions, not existing system passwords, not where the weak entrance is. Call instead. This is genuine advice and we would give you the same advice about a competitor’s form.
- Do not try to break it. No probing, load testing, credential stuffing of the form endpoint or attempts to interfere with anyone else’s use of the site. If you find a genuine security problem here, tell us and we will thank you properly.
The information here is general. It is not advice about your address.
This site cites law and code more heavily than most in this trade, because that is the part buyers are actually missing. Two things follow from it.
Everything cited is cited as of the date on the page. Codes are amended. The New York City Electrical Code moved to a new edition effective 21 December 2025; the low-voltage permit exemption was amended by a 2024 local law that took effect on the same date. A page written before an amendment can be accurate on the day it was written and wrong eighteen months later. Where a page states a requirement, it names the section so you can go and read it. The statute is the source of truth. Our summary of it is not. If you are about to spend real money on the strength of a paragraph here, open the section.
The same words also land differently on different buildings. Whether a rule reaches your building can depend on when it was erected or converted, how many units it has, its occupancy classification and what has been done to it since. A page can tell you which questions decide it. Only a survey of your building can answer them.
Nothing on this website is legal advice or an engineering opinion. We are a low-voltage contractor. Where a question is legal, ask a lawyer. Where it needs a stamp, it needs a design professional. We will say so on the call rather than in a footnote.
Links out, product names, and what belongs to whom
Links. We link to manufacturer documentation, code text and standards bodies because the primary source is more useful to you than our paraphrase of it. We do not control those sites, we are not responsible for what they publish, and a link is not an endorsement of the company behind the document. It is a pointer at the document.
Product and manufacturer names. Where we name a manufacturer or a model, we are describing equipment we install or would consider installing. Trademarks and product names belong to their owners. Naming a product is not a claim to be an authorized dealer, partner or certified installer for its maker. If we ever hold such an authorization, it will be stated explicitly, in its own words, and it will be checkable, not implied by a logo.
Our material. The writing, photographs, diagrams and page structure here are ours. You may quote reasonable extracts with attribution and a link. Republishing pages, or substantial parts of them, needs permission. Ask, and the answer is often yes.
Availability, changes and governing law
Availability. The site is provided as it is. It is a static site, so it is about as reliable as a website gets, but hosts have outages and pages get moved. If a link here is broken, the sitemap page lists everything and the phone number works regardless.
Accuracy. We correct errors as we find them and when readers tell us about them. If you spot something wrong (a mis-cited section, a number that does not match your building, a link that has rotted), email info@gothamaccesscontrolny.com. It gets fixed and the date at the top of that page changes. That is what the dates are for.
Changes to these terms. We may revise them. The version that applies to you is the one published when you read the site, and it carries a date. There is no email notification and no pop-up, because a banner asking you to accept terms you were never going to read is theater.
Law. These terms are governed by the law of the State of New York, and any dispute about the website belongs in the state or federal courts sitting in New York.
Contact. info@gothamaccesscontrolny.com or (917) 353-9599, Sunday to Thursday, plus Friday morning. See also the privacy policy for what happens to anything you send us, and the accessibility statement if any part of this site is hard for you to use.
If this website and your signed scope disagree
The signed scope wins, every time. Read it before you sign it, and if a sentence in it is not clear enough to explain to a board, tell us and we will rewrite that sentence.
Common questions
How long is a written quote good for?
Thirty days from the date on the document, unless the document names a different period. After that we re-issue rather than honor a number built on old hardware pricing and old lead times.
Re-issuing costs nothing and normally takes a day, because the survey work is already done and the photographs are on file. What changes is the equipment cost and, more often, the schedule: lead times on controllers and IP intercom panels have swung by three months inside a single year. If a board vote is going to take four months, tell us at the survey and we will note in the document what is most likely to move.
You gave me a figure on the phone. Isn’t that binding?
No, and it should not be. A number given about a building nobody has walked is a guess based on the description you gave, and the description is usually accurate about the symptom and silent about the thing that drives the cost: how many conductors are in the riser, what condition they are in, and whether there is a route for new cable that does not involve a landmarked facade.
We give ballpark figures anyway, because refusing to talk about money until somebody is standing in your lobby wastes your time and ours. Treat it as what it is: the right order of magnitude, useful for deciding whether to book a survey. The number that means something is the one in the written scope.
The quote has an “allowance” line on it. What does that actually mean?
It means we found a condition we genuinely cannot see behind until work starts, and rather than burying a guess in the price or leaving it out to make the total look better, we named it and capped it. The cap is the most that line can cost you.
Typical examples: a riser whose top three floors cannot be reached without opening a closet ceiling; an existing conduit whose far end nobody can locate; a lobby soffit that may or may not have a route through it. If the condition is better than the cap, you pay the lower actual figure. If it is worse, work stops before anything is billed and you get photographs, a price and a decision to make. A quote with no allowances on an old building is not a more confident quote. It is usually a quote with the same risk hidden inside the total.
Can I use the code information on this site in a board presentation?
Yes, and that is largely who it is written for. Quote it, print it, put it in a package with a link back. No permission needed.
Two cautions. Check the date on the page, because codes are amended and a page that was right when it was written can be out of date. And if the decision turns on the requirement (if the board is voting money because of it), open the section itself and read it. Our summary is written to be accurate and it is still a summary. The statute is what a plan examiner will read.
What happens if you open a wall and the price changes?
Work stops on that item. We photograph what we found, price it against the allowance already in the document, send it to you, and wait. Nothing is added to an invoice you have not approved in writing, and there is no such thing as “we carried on because we were already there.”
The practical cost of that discipline is a delay of a day or two while somebody signs off, and on a co-op it can be longer. We think that is the right trade. The alternative (discretion to keep going and bill afterward) is how a $9,000 job becomes a $14,000 argument, and the argument always happens in front of a board.
Want the document, not the number?
Book a survey and you get a written scope: hardware by model, doors by name, cable by type, allowances named where the building is hiding something.
Sun to Thu 9am to 5pm · Fri 9am to 12pm · Sat closed