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Automatic renewal question
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 I work for a security company in west Virgina and i was curious if you knew if a company could automatically renew a monitoring contract? For instance if a person has a system on a 5 year contract at the end of the 5 years can the company automatically renew the contract for another 5 years if it says so in the contract or does it just go month to month or how does that work? I would really appreciate it!!!
Thanks
Charles W
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Answer
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Here is source for list of states with automatic renewal statutes
https://www.kirschenbaumesq.com/page/alarm-law-issues
West Virginia is not listed so I don't believe it has any statute on automatic renewal
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Question - canceling fire alarm monitoring
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Ken
 What is the legal and proper procedure for cancellation of Fire Alarm service e.g.emergency calls, monitoring, when a customer does not pay invoices regarding the above. I was under the impression that the above services cannot be canceled as these  services are under the blanket of Life Safety. I feel the customer is responsible for the safety of lives and property at their venue  of operation and should pay their bills in a timely fashion. If large companies  like Con Edison, LILCO etc. can cut off electrical power and services why can't an alarm company.  Keep in mind, I am not a listed monitoring company. I place my monitoring customers with an authorized monitoring fire alarm monitoring company. A contract is established between the monitoring company  and end user. I am listed on this  contract as the Installer. I invoice the end user and pay the  monitoring company. All required service on the fire alarm equipment including transmitter is furnished, programmed and tested by my company. 
Tom Finelli
Fire & Security Systems, Inc.
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Answer
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 You can cancel your services if the subscriber defaults in the contract.  For fire you are probably required to notify the AHJ of the impending termination of services.  Even if the contract does not require notice to the defaulting subscriber it's a good idea to give the notice.  No particular form of notice is required unless the contract, statute or AHJ requires it.
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Question - who signs for alarm co
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Ken,
 We use a Security Equipment Sale and Service Agreement contract that we purchased from your office.  Where a signature is required by our company, does an “Authorized officer” of our company have to sign, or can any representative of our company sign the contract.
Thanks,
Lisa Brown
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Answer
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 Anyone the alarm co authorizes to sign the contract can sign it.  It doesn't have to be an officer.
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Comment on history of third party administrators
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Dear Ken,
 I'd like to make a quick comment on the history of third party administration
 First, as hard as it is to believe, SIAC celebrates 10 years of service to the industry this year. During that tenure we have seen dramatic results in the average number of responses per system per year. A decade ago we were averaging over two dispatches per system per year. With the application of ECV, and other best practices, we now see an average dispatch rate of .2, one dispatch every 5 years on residential and 1.2 on commercial. Great work on the part of the industry and while SIAC has driven this the real credit goes to the alarm dealers who have embraced and adopted a different attitude to false dispatches.
 In fact SIAC is receiving feedback from agencies that are enforcing ordinances that show that 85% of all alarm users have no dispatches per year and another 10% have only one! Pretty amazing statistics.
 In the same decade we saw law enforcement agencies fail time after time with enforcing alarm ordinances. Once an ordinance was passed these agencies would then have to purchase expensive hardware and extremely expensive software in order to administer the ordinance. When these agencies could not get all of the systems registered interest in the ordinance would suffer and eventually die an unnatural death. This should have been predicable since we were tasking law enforcement with a job they had no skills to preform.
 The same vendors that were selling the expensive software programs determined that they too could have recurring revenue if they became billing and collecting businesses and an industry was born. I happen to live in a jurisdiction that uses one of these companies and as an alarm user I couldn't be happier. On the two occasions I have had to make contact I have sent late night emails and had an answer by the next morning.
 All in all, when a third party vendor is doing the billing and collections the agency is able to keep more dollars than they would if they were running their program in house. I don't disagree that we are paying for a service that we have in theory already paid taxes for, however I do feel there has to be some point in the middle where we must meet, and for now this seems to be the best answer.
Ron Walters
SIAC

 

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