At the beginning of January of this year I had the ADT security system installed. The agent I called at the advertised number told me that for what I wanted for my home, the cost would be $35 a month.
After the installers arrived and put in the system, they told me that the monthly fee was $44.99, aka $45, a month, not the $34.99 I was quoted “because of the added equipment I requested”, even though I’d gone over all that with the agent on the phone. Arguing the point with the installer did no good, it was that or take the system back out, and for the $120 a year difference, I’d rather have the security. This is a 2-year contract.
I have no complaints about the system. It’s a good one and it works. So far. I haven’t been burglarized yet, though, and hopefully the true test never comes around. My sense of home security is definitely improved and I no longer worry about leaving my home to go shopping or whatever, so it’s worth it for that.
The part that irritates me more than the extra ten bucks a month I was lied to about, is that ADT charges for two months service in advance when I was told it was one month in advance.
I checked my Visa bill on line and I saw three ADT charges, two for early January when it was installed and one for the beginning of February. The February bill was $45 for monthly service but there was a $71 charge in January. So I called them up and asked why that $71 bill, and was told that was for January, pro-rated, plus the 1-month in advance February charge. But wait. You charged me $45 at the beginning of February, didn’t I pay in advance for February when I did that?
No. I paid for the month of March, two months in advance, is how that works out. The contract apparently says somewhere in the various very long, fine-print documents handed me, that I have to give 30 days notice before I can cancel the service, as if I were renting a house, and they collect that 30 days right at the start, again just as if I were renting a house and paying first AND last months rent in advance. If you pay for a service after geting it for a month, like the electric bill, you aren’t paying in advance. If you pay the bill at the start of the month, you are.
This reminds me of Dish Network. I’d signed up with them on a 2 year contract also. The service is advertised as $19.99 (yeah, 20 bucks) a month for the first year. After 8 months they started billing me for $25 a month and I called them up and told them to either cancel the service or reduce the bill as I still had 4 months to go. They lowered the bill back down but 2 months later raised it again and I had to go through that crap all over again. When the second year began, the bill was $35, up $15 from the first year but I knew that was the deal I’d signed up for and that was okay.
For the first few months, it stayed at $35. Then they boosted it to $40 and I was back on the phone again. So every few months for the rest of the year I had to spend an hour on the phone with Dish Network getting them to bring my bill back down to $35 a month. At the end of that second year when my contract ran out, I cancelled the service and sent them back their modem using the UPS label and box they sent me.
Since then I’ve been getting billed about $13 with no explanation and that bill’s been turned over to a collection agency because I won’t pay it. I don’t give away free money.
Now, with Dish Network I made them send me bills in the mail, because I figured rightly that they’d screw me into the dirt if I gave them access to my credit card. With ADT it remains to be seen if they pull a Dish Network on me, because they insist on a credit card if you want the service. Another of life’s little adventures, eh?
It’s the same shit with so many purchases services.
Um, purchased services. I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t see the screen as I was typing in the comment.