About six years ago I was safe shopping and also thought Cannon looked like a good deal. Several other safe companies have jumped on the in home warranty bandwagon, but Cannon was the original. The Dunhams stores in our area always had good deals on them, and their American Eagle line with the thinner plate steel door was particularly affordable. I decided to find out the real scoop and went to Anchor Safe in Warren which is a major commercial safe dealer/service company.
Found out when I got there they were the exclusive Cannon dealer for Michigan. Apparently, because the chain stores had buildings in other states, that they were able to get the Cannon brand and sell them in Michigan. This irked Anchor Safe as they not only couldn't compete with the low prices due to volume buys from the big chains, they also couldn't get any inventory for themselves. The gentleman that described all their features to me was actually one of their licensed safe crackers and said he had never seen a single Cannon that anyone had sucessfully gotten into, even the ones with plate steel doors. He said usually, the safes are banged up pretty good and the dial/keypad knocked off. Cannon would dispatch them to open the safe for the customer to remove their contents, then Cannon would do a no cost exchange. At the time they were also the exclusive region service reps. I left there very confident that any Cannon safe would be a good investment.
I bought one of the big American Eagle safes from Dunhams and couldn't be any happier. By the way, security wise a dial is no safer than the keypad, so you might as well go for convnience and get the pad.
Since then, I've spoken with another independant locksmith about the safes. He said, whatever you do don't put any pressure on your handle until you have entered the combination. Apparently, there is a very small pin that will shear if you put too much force on the handle. He said many folks find this out after their kids are messing around when they're not around. After the pin shears, the handle will free spin and you'll need a 'smith to fix it.
CB
