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Sub demands ADT dealer pay false alarm fines
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Ken,
    I am a ADT dealer based in Los Angeles CA & need your thoughts & advise on this particular issue.  I installed an alarm at an office and in 3 months they had 7 alarm occurence at 11.00 am -2.00pm during office hours.  One alarm was answered but unable to verify password & police was sent. Their false alarm bills amounted to $9,000.00.
    We once did move her keypad & later moved her front motion.  The owner has reported it to the consumer affairs and demanding that we pay for the false
alarms. They are saying the false alarms were caused by the motion and after we moved the motion the false alarms stopped.
    For your info they are located on the 10th floor and the entire front office area is glass.
    We appreciate your thoughts on this issue
Thanks
anon
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Answer
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    If you used the Standard Form Contracts, which ADT doesn't, you would be insulated from the false alarm fines.  [I don't know if the ADT contract has such provision].  But having the contract provision, which a court should uphold, may not carry the same weight with a consumer affairs investigator or hearing officer.  
    It really doesn't make a lot of sense to me that a motion detector was armed during office hours, and it also sounds odd that the motion detectors were facing a glass wall where they were likely to and apparently did activate.  Your placement of the motion detectors may have been negligent design or perhaps the sensitivity could have been reduced [pardon me but I am not technical].  Also sounds like a bit more time should have been spent educating the subscriber in the use of the system.  Why it took mulitple false alarms and a build up of $9000 in fines to move the motion detector is another mystery.  
    So the real question is whether you designed the placement of the motion detectors, whether they were calibrated correctly, what contract provisions you have and if you want to rely on them, and what customer relations considerations you want to give to the mess.  Figure that out and you'll have your answer.
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comment on can you cancel the sub from June 30, 2014 article
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Ken
     In response to Keith's question on June 30 2014, why don’t we in the industry form a database of customers who cancel and go to another company?. No information would be given other then that they cancelled for whatever reason and went to another company. The other company would check the database and look up the customer, and if they were treated fairly by the company that lost them and left for example a lower price you could see that. We don’t need to check their credit, it would not be illegal to report this( a good question for Ken Kirschenbaum)
    Would it?
    We all lose customers to other companies and to a sales pitch that may be too good to be true, but I agree that we can collectively as an industry form a database and help one another. The credit card companies do this and it may be a good a good idea once the legal questions have been answered. I have customers who left and wanted out of the standard form contract that were behind on payments ( who isn’t? ) and I tried to work it out with them. I would like to hear opinions on this one.
Rob Leto
RNR Systems
NY
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Response
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    Reporting bad credit or poor experience with subscribers, creating in essense a black list, might violate a few consumer credit reporting statutes.  It would also provide a list for some alarm companies to find new subscribers.  Also, from my almost 40 years of collection experience for the alarm industry it's likely to be a rather large list of whos who.  You'd be surprised with the big names that get sued by alarm companies.  
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