QUESTION:

Ken,

 I enjoy all of your emails and have passed your name around to many others in our industry.  We have purchased your CCTV, alarm and services contracts.  2 Questions:

Do we have any contractual right to go back to a non paying customer and either turn off their ability to view cameras over the Internet and / or disable viewing of some of the cameras at their facility?  If not, what kind of language would need to be in placed to allow us to do this?  (There are no outstanding issues with the install and customer has signed off on job completion.)

Our proposal and contract says that the remaining balance of a job install is immediately due upon completion of a job, yet, even after a customer signs off that an install is complete (and there are no outstanding issues), we still have late pays.  Are we allowed and what kind of contractual language would be needed to be able to charge accumulative late fees and / or interest charges?

Michael Martin

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ANSWER:

    Once you sell and install equipment you can not go back and disable the system or remove it.  Your remedy will be to sue for breach of contract; non payment.  The answer is different if you have filed a UCC-1, in which event you can recover your collateral, either peacefully or by court intervention.

    Your sales and installation contract should address non payment.  You can charge interest.  You can not charge a penalty.  You can charge legal fees if you refer the collection to an attorney.  Your rights are generally covered by the contract.  Without a contract you have common law breach of contract rights which would include interest at the legal rate.  Unless there is a statute permitting legal fees, the common law does not provide for legal fees in a breach of contract case.

    My Sales contract, available at www.alarmcontracts.com , does provide for UCC-1 filing and recovery of legal fees.

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QUESTION:

Hello Ken,

When a landlord who owns the property & a tenant who wants to be monitored by central station. The landlord wants to pay for the monitoring bills, however wants the property to be in the tenants name for dispatching the authorities. Who signs what ?

We have the Central Station Monitoring Agreement, Service Equipment Repair Agreement, Alarm Monitoring Agreement From Central Station, 3 day waiver, Additional Equipment Systems & Service Disclaimer.

Dan Duckson

Ron Duckson Security Systems Inc.

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ANSWER:

    The tenant is your subscriber, although the landlord will be paying you.  I would suggest that the tenant be named as the subscriber, that the contract provide that the landlord is going to be the one billed and responsible for payment, and I would try and get the landlord to guarantee the contract terms.  The contracts you would use would be the monitoring contract and service contract.  Both available at www.alarmcontracts.com.