April 27, 2011

 

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Question

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Hi Ken:

Just a quick question. How soon after an account becomes delinquent can you terminate monitoring service and is there a particular procedure to follow.

Thanks Mark

Vanderheyden Technologies

South Bend, IN

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Answer

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There are a few issues that you should consider regarding termination of service.

First, how long do you wait before considering a subscriber to be delinquent. An inflexible approach may be practical for a large alarm company with thousands of subscribers. That company might adopt a 60 or 90 day rule. But a more practical rule of thumb for a smaller alarm company that knows its subscribers would be to watch for a deviation from the normal payment history and practice. A subscriber who pays within a week of an invoice who goes two weeks late may be in trouble; you need to find out as soon as possible why payment wasn't made. It could be the result of some problem that you can easily apologize for and fix.

Second, you need to see if there is anything in your contract that deals with termination. My standard form contract has this provision in it:

"and ALARM COMPANY shall be permitted to terminate all its services under this agreement and remotely re-program or delete any programming without relieving Subscriber of any obligation herein"

There is no notice requirement in the contract. That being said however, I would encourage some notice. I would not waste time and expense on certified mail, but you could use email or fax. You could even leave a message on the alarm panel: "monitoring suspended" or something to that effect.

When you do communicate that monitoring is to be terminated you should be unequivocal about it. Avoid a notice that permits continuation of service if the subscriber does something, like pay or make arrangements for payment. That can leave you open to a challenge that the subscriber didn't know service terminated. It's better to provide notice that "monitoring services will terminate May 10, 2011 at 3 PM". Make sure that's when you terminate service. If for any reason you don't, then follow up with another communication to the subscriber advising that service is being continued.

Finally, make sure you check your local jurisdiction, with the AHJ, to see if there are any statutes that require some notice of termination of service to the subscriber or AHJ or both. That is more common for fire alarm systems, but could apply to intrusion as well.