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Doing business in your name 

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Ken,

You mentioned in response to "no money no contract - now what" that:

"You should not be doing business in your own name - not even one service call; not one installation; not one monitoring take over.".

What do you mean by doing business in your own name?  Are you saying all alarm companies should be incorporated?  Thanks for all your help to our industry.

Larry

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Response

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Yes, all alarm companies should be incorporated.  Do not do business in your own name.

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Verbal Contracts

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Ken,

I enjoy reading your newsletters and forum. In the months I've been following I noticed that "Anon" is frequently featured in your threads. Which makes it surprising that he would do work without a signed contract. That being said, in my humble (non-legal) opinion I believe you have allowed your personal emotions to guide your response. I do not know what state Anon is in, but in Florida a "verbal agreement" is enforceable (Obviously, not recommended). Did he file a notice to owner? He should have lien rights. "Moving on" may not be his only option. Perhaps a formally drafted letter from a legal professional, such as yourself, would motivate the individual to pay the monies owed. 

Just food for thought...

Jesus Fonte, CGC EF

Providence Fire and Security

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Response

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Anon is more than one person.  It's all those who write in and prefer to remain anonymous, or those I think need their idenity hidden to protect the innocent, or not so.  

Verbal contracts are in fact "legal" and generally enforceable everywhere.  Some verbal contracts must be in writing to satisfy the Statute of Frauds.  Others need to be in writing because of consumer laws.  Alarm contracts need to be in writing for residential subscribers, and an alarm company would be foolish to do any alarm /  security work for any subscriber without a written contract [written by me].

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Complaining about central station isn't enough

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Ken

Can we set up a conference,  my Central Station is XYZ  Monitoring. I don't think they care about the Dealers or, they are taking advantage other Monitoring Stations,  Unfare practice. There is more  to the story.  I'd rather not say on e-mail......... I feel like crap for what they did to me........

anon

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Response

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The above did include the centrals name, and the person who sent the email had his name as sender, but not in the email itself.  So I decided not to name the central.  Complaining without taking some action isn't going to help you are anyone else.  See the central stations in The Alarm Exchange.   If they don't treat you right the first problem they will have is removal from the Exchange.  Same for the other categories.  Let me know if you need intervention.  

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Contract for employee or independent contractor 

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Hi Ken,

If you could give me some information regarding a contact for an 

employee that is based on salary that would be great. 

Eric

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Response

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Sure.  Use either an Employment Contract [for W2 employee] or Affiliate Sales Contract [for 1099 independent agent.  Get either or both at www.alarmcontracts.com

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More on sharing subscriber info with police

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Ken

Customer's info.

Our personal info is being shared, like it or not. Our names, addresses, phone numbers are in the phone book since the invention of telephone. The police already has our info on driver's license records, your car license plate and registrant info is on police car computer. Just about any government employee can obtain login password to government office computer and get anything on anybody. You may not even need access to government computer. Just type the name of person in search engine on the internet and you come up with lot of personal info. You don't have to provide your name. You can search for personal info from any computer.

 

The issue with providing customer's list to the police is only that the police will not safeguard it as required by law. The bigger police departments are more disorganized than smaller ones. There will be copies, some copies will end up in garbage without shredding. Whenever someone finds list of names in garbage, the first idea is "what can I do with that. Can I sell it, can I use it for purpose that will benefit me financially". It is the opportunity that makes a thief.

 

Other reasons why customer's info should not be shared were posted here already, but we all know that our personal info is being shared, sold to advertisers, telemarketers, etc. Internet search engines save every word you type in the search bar. Current software is still dumb, but in the future the saved info would be pieced together, sometimes incorrectly and may lend you in trouble. My dumb, really dumb smartphone is attaching pictures to names in my phone list by itself. The pictures are incorrect. It is probably picture of person with same name, but not the person in my list. I can not delete the pictures, I probably can't even replace them. The dumb smartphone simply does it by itself the way some stupid programmer wrote the phone list software.

Dusan

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more Didden and Salt Lake City

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Ken,

I stand by all of my comments about Salt Lake City and false alarms.

What Mr. Cohen does not know about Port Chester is considerable considering that his office is not that far from Port Chester, just 30 miles. Port Chester has 58 sworn officers for its 2.5 sq miles. It is the second densest Village in New York State. Its Village Court is the busiest Village Court in all of New York State, operates a 35M budget and has over 150 employees. Do to past Mayor’s and administrations, Port Chester has become a sanctuary Village and our actual population is much greater with a substantial overcrowding problem in our buildings as well as the school system. I point this out because the affects of reality are not always reflected in reports or propaganda disseminated by one side for self gratification or validation.

Two examples of self validation are here in this colloquy between Mitch and me. Mitch supports video monitoring for verification and I support ECV and other proven approaches to false alarm reduction that work without having to place a larger financial burden on the consumer.  I remain on my point that government serves the people and not the other way around. Today’s proven programs are not too much of a burden for any jurisdiction if enforced upon the end-user as well as the alarm industry.

Maybe we should have a webinar where I debate everyone who thinks I am wrong. LOL, I am so used to this in our business, industry politics and now local politics. Ken, I invite your readers to e-mail me direct as well if they have comments, bdidden@usacentralstation.com

Bart

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Response

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Maybe I should tell them where you live....