Moving? Married?
Get Service Agreement Changes in Writing!
Consumer Help Web actively encourages businesses and consumers to work together when life events such as a marriage, death or move take place. Very often, monthly service agreements need to be immediately addressed to avoid excess charges. In most cases, companies have a standard policy covering the situation (they do, after all, regularly happen).
That is what made the case of Alarm One so puzzling.
Consumer Help Web was contacted by an individual who had a home alarm monitoring contract with this company. Coincidentally, our customer moved her household shortly before her contract expired. Being a smart consumer, our customer knew to cancel her existing service during the permitted period.
Instead of processing the cancellation, Alarm One staff reportedly urged our customer to keep the equipment and told her that she would have to pay for only one extra month of monitoring. Instead, the company continues to bill our customer months later, apparently believing that the cancelled contract is still in force.
We wrote Alarm One's senior management twice during April 2004 to determine why our customer's cancellation was not processed and request that they contact her. After receiving no answer, our consumer was given contact information for a local consumer attorney, as well as the contact information for the appropriate regulatory authority.
The moral of this story: Get all changes to service agreements in writing. While we normally recommend simply logging the date, time and name of the customer service representative, changing contract terms - regardless of the circumstance - require more diligence.
Be a smart consumer and get the change in writing. If the company refuses to put the change in writing, chances are good that no change will be made. Proceed as if the company promised nothing - because they haven't.
