Not honoring end of contract
Complaint
Lina
Country: United States
After 3 years of bank drawn payments, and honoring our conract with this comnpany, they try to charge for 5 months extra service. We moved from the address of original service in Feb 2007 and continued our payment committment until our contract was up in July 2007. Despite the end of terms, they continued to try and charge us. When we asked for explanation, they said we needed to send a signed letter of cancellation to a long distance fax number(972-620-5553) - of course they don't want to make it easy. We sent the letter in August but just recently within the last month found out that they did not honor the cancellation notice because the signature did not come through on our original letter. When we called to clear it up they refused to let the unwarranted charges off unless we re-signed with them for another 3 years at our new residence. These people are crooks - I have re-sent the letter Dec 2007 and they threatened to ding my credit if I did not pay for a service at a residence I have not lived at for almost a year. We held up our agreement - when did it become the corporations decision whether or not we want to continue service?? Our contract was up, then we had to jump through flaming hoops to cancell it. Anyway, I can't find any other fax number to send my letter in hopes of finding someone in the Monitronics company with some morals.
Comments
File consumer fraud complaints with the state AG where they are located. Alarm monitoring companies are often state regulated and required to be licensed.
Also file a BBB complaint to make other consumers aware of their business practices.
So they now claim. If this was about anything other than wringing some extra dollars out of you, they would have contacted you the day they received your fax, and requested that you resend it or mail it. If they are claiming you owe them under some theory that you cost them by inadequately notifying them of your cancellation, which they did in fact receive, they would have had an obligation to "mitigate" whatever those "costs" were, which they could easily have done by promptly resoving any uncertainty they might had regarding your cancellation.
Instead, they deliberately sat on it, to now claim you got several months more of their "service", on a place where you no longer live.
They DID, however, admit receiving your cancellation when you faxed it, they also have admitted they knew you were the party cancelling in writing, and they already knew you no longer lived at that address, from your earlier cancellation.
If you cancelled your auto insurance, such as when selling your car, you wouldn't have had anything like this kind of problem. Yet alarm companies somehow consider this extra money somehow their right.
File a BBB complaint, since alarm monitoring companies are the type of business that other consumers will likely check out thru BBB. Note in your complaint that they have been stringing along your cancellation for almost a year, delaying by months notifying you of their claim that you haven't properly cancelled to demand a few more months of payments, and even rejected your faxed written cancellation, trying to pad on charges for a house you haven't lived in for almost a year.
Demand a refund back to your initial notice to cancel. In your BBB response, report "not satisfied" unless they do so.
I can't pull a Florida BBB report on them, since the US BBB just refers to the Florida BBB, which has a link back to the US site. You might have to call.
$24.00 dollars but I will not pay this bill. Stay away from this company. Any business that has to steal money by not cancelling people's contract do not deserve your business. I have seen numerous complaints for the same problem.
I've sent two letters, signed, with all the information about my account and they claim that my signature was not on the letter... that's bs, I signed both of them.
Now, with my credit being dinged on, because I won't pay them a dime!, they continue to send bills to my home. At this point, I'm so furious that I'm contacting all the "Business Credentials" they have like the CSAA (showing a Five Diamond Rating?!), SDM Magazine (who rates them as a top 100 company), and anyone else that will ever dare put their name up with "Monitronics".
Maybe we need to send complaints to the BBB about all the companys that are lining up with Monitronics... Let's PLAY BALL!
If all else fails, contact the Executive Management Team. Mike Haislip is the CEO of the company. He is one of the finest persons I have ever worked for and will generate a timely response to your concern. You can Google Monitronics International to find the list of Corporate Officers and address information. I truly hope this is helpful information. We take pride in the work that we do and we are a good company. We are one of the fastest growing companies in our industry and this sometimes works against us but our core values are to take care of our customers.