Desert Alarm, Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 8, 2016/01/19) */
Customer did enter into a Month ContractSection on the front page of the contract (attached) that customer signed, it clearly states "That it will automatically continue for one successive year period from the last day of the original
term unless either party gives the other at least days prior written notice of it's intention to cancel the agreement at the end of the original term or any renewal term"This is not hidden in "fine print" it is located just below where it written where the amount of the monitoring service fee is
In March of customer did not provide us written notice of his intent to discontinue monitoring, so per section of his signed contract it auto-renewed for the period of April 20th to April 20th
Furthermore, this customer did not give us day advance notice to cancel monitoring, he wanted same day cancellation (attached cancellation notice)simply stated that it was "no longer needed" It was not due to any service related issues, or sale of home- We were fulfilling our terms of the mutually signed contractThe customer changed the terms of the contract, we did not
I advised customer that the $that he would be forfeiting the $on the account,(see attached) we prepaid for the monitoring for the year (fulfilling our terms) and the $would be applied to his account to fulfill the terms of the mutually signed contract
We stand firm in enforcing the terms of the contract that the customer himself has signed
I had not only advised customer that he was forfeiting his amount on the account, I had also provided him a copy of his contract outlining Section of the contract just in case the customer had misplaced his own copy (of which he has had for over months to read the "fine print")It is our belief that once the customer was presented with this documentation, he got angry and lodged a complaint against usAs you will see from our supporting documentation, we are well within our right to apply the amount on the account to fulfill the terms of the contract and not issue a refund to the customer
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 11, 2016/01/20) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
I fulfilled my year contract with this companyIt does not clearly state nor was I told of the automatic extension of this contractClearly stating in a contract does not mean fine print
Final Business Response /* (4000, 13, 2016/01/28) */
Mr***'s decision not to read his copy of the contract that he entered intoDesert Alarm provided the customer his own copy of the contract on 4/23/which he signed on his own free will , does not absolve him of his contractual and financial obligationAdditionally, is not Desert Alarms role to protect this party from his own contractual agreement that he made with this companyThe customers failure to read the contract that he entered into during the years and months that the document has been in his possession does not support his claim to "fine print" that he was "unaware of"
Finally, we have supplied supporting documentation that substantiates our stance that there is no refund due to the customer despite his allegations

I am rejecting this response because:
Back in August I filed a complaint regarding Desert AlarmFrom their last response I was going to get reimbursed and they were to take back their equipmentI have not hear from them, nor have I received my refund

[redacted] business was appreciated here at Desert Alarm . We contacted him back in 7/19/2016 . To inform him he was Past Due he had assumed when he called an declined, doing the up-grade. That the account would be cancelled out . Our Policy has always been a signed written form in order to close the account . We informed him at the time we would work with him on the cost of the upgrade . The system was always communicating with our central station .   As a courtesy we have removed all amount’s owing on the account, as well as it has been shut down. Please let me know if you have any questions or concern’s Look forward to hearing from you soon   “We appreciate your business.” Thank you for the opportunity to work with you .

[redacted] business was appreciated here at Desert Alarm . We contacted him back in 7/19/2016 . To inform him he was Past Due he had assumed when he called an declined, doing the up-grade. That the account would be cancelled out . Our Policy has always been a signed written form in order to close...

the account . We informed him at the time we would work with him on the cost of the upgrade . The system was always communicating with our central station .   As a courtesy we have removed all amount’s owing on the account, as well as it has been shut down. Please let me know if you have any questions or concern’s Look forward to hearing from you soon   “We appreciate your business.” Thank you for the opportunity to work with you .

To whom it may concern, We have received and thoroughly reviewed the complaint made by Mrs. [redacted] and have found the following. In no shape or form will we accept to her allegation that our company tricked her into this agreement of into purchasing the equipment she currently still has in her home....

Please see attached purchase order signed by Mrs. [redacted] on June 14, 2016, in this document you will find that Desert Alarm went about and beyond our standards by waiving the charges for the alarm system itself normally priced at $195 which is advertised and could be found on our website. (Copy attached) During the initial consultation it is required to ALWAYS ask what path of communication would be used either landline or a GS 'purchased through the alarm company. If Gsm is required (they will not have a phone line) it is an additional cost of $295 with an additional $10 a month on your monthly cost bringing your monthly monitoring from a standard $29.95 to $39.95.(which is the same in any alarm company) Mrs. [redacted] was explained this and she did not want to pay the additional cost so the agreement was to have a phone line ready on the day of instillation. Mr. [redacted] wrote in parentheses the $295 cost next to the equipment as procedure requires, this indicates that it was proposed, normally some clients do change their mind at the time of installation and this assists the technician on site to know what the additional charge would be, and also lets our parts director know to send the equipment out in case it may be added- If you review the purchase order that $295 was not added to her total balance, hence she did not pay for it. The problem that initialized this entire complaint was that our technician made a mistake and installed the unit without it being purchased, when he did this it was flagged at our  office within 12 hours of installation which is what led to Mr. [redacted] personally contacting Mrs. [redacted] to let her know that as she was explained that unit would be at additional charge so we need to go back and set her system up correctly to match the purchase order. She would not allow for Desert Alarm to return and remove the equipment nor did she want to pay the cost of the unit. We have Been trying to find a resolution to this account from the day of installation until now. We pride ourselves in giving the best customer service in the industry and would accept faults when mistakes were made unfortunately the claims made of no response and shutting down service due to none payment is false. Mrs. [redacted] demanded us to give her everything at no charge and that her monitoring left at the standard $29.95 and if we would not do that to cancel her account, which is what we did. The cancellation process was begun and is what caused her to no longer be able to remote into cameras or arm or disarm the system. l have gone ahead and attached call logs from the times our office staff has spoken to her to try to accommodate her. At no time have I, [redacted] had a conversation with this client which is who she claims turned her system off due to nonpayment, so already the claims prove to be false. The way that Mrs. [redacted] has her system set up the pricing is as follows: GSM: $295 GSM Monthly monitoring: $10 Video Messaging: $7 Interactive Services: $15 Total: $327 Desert Alarm, created a discount plan for this client to keep their business and find a resolution for all parties involved as follows: GSM: $195 GSM Monthly monitoring: $10 Video Messaging: $0 Interactive Services: $5 Total: $210 (discount of $117) This was proposed to the client after she visited our office which intrigued them and caused them to schedule a service for us to go out and get the system going again. The day of the appointment when our technician called minutes out she cancelled the service call. Attached you will find the closed ticket which reflects the notes from the tech, clearly pointing out that the cameras would not be able to work until we get into the home. At this point obviously all parties just want to resolve this issue and move forward, we have offered our absolutely best offer to this client to continue having a smart home which we will still honor. Now if the client wishes to cancel, although we have a signed contract for 24 months Desert alarm will again go above standards and terminate the contract once all Desert Alarm equipment is removed and returned in working condition as it was installed. Reimbursement will be made for the only item that was actually paid for which was a wife Camera priced at $295 plus tax and for the August month services which totals in $36.95. It is unfortunate that we had to come to these extremities to continue to attempt to Find a resolution that would not affect either party involved. We thank you in advance for taking the time to fully review all factors in this situation and assisting parties involved in coming to an understanding. If anything further is required please feel free to give us a call.

Final Consumer Response /* (2000, 6, 2016/06/09) */
Hi [redacted],
I received this email today. Interestingly enough they decided that since we have fulfilled our contract, they will not make us pay any more, since we made a payment June 1st and I've been trying to cancel since before that.
Thank...

you for your help!
[redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 11, 2016/01/13) */
We have just received notification of this dispute and took time to take a thorough look into the account. After closely reviewing all documents, calls and paper work for Cactusberry Plus are findings are the following:
We were never notified...

of a credit card changes for the account and we continuously sent out paper invoice to the premise to try to collect, inclusive our collections manager [redacted] reached out to him via email with a breakdown of open invoices, which we never received a response to as well. Please see attached documents that reflect the email and stamp of when we were trying to bring the account current. It would not be in our best interest as a business to provide moMtoring service and not collect the balance due. We also waived all past due late fees for this customer in hopes to remove the account from our collections department_ In terms of the false alarm fee they paid to the city, Palm Springs charges a flat rate on an annual basis to have an alarm system in your property we have no control over that fee. On January 21" 2015 we received an alarm from zone 1 and we proceeded to follow protocol by calling everyone they provided on the call list if we are unable to reach anyone we are instructed to dispatch police which is what we did. The customer claims we did not follow the order they requested but if you look at document "Subscriber Information" attached, they provided the numbers to call and the order and we followed it exactly which you can also see in attached document "CMS Connect". When we spoke to [redacted] regarding this issue and also provided him with the event history he acknowledged what our documentation showed. He also stated that police told. him we never called and raised his voice multiple times because of that which later after he reviewed his camera footage show that they actually were on site, which shows we did our job. I do not show a service call or ticket created prior to December where he is requesting service because the system wouldn't arm or disarm, I show Alicia in the service department attempted to walk the customer through using the app on his phone and be portrayed that he understood. Had we been made aware of a fault in the system we would have rectified the issue immediately, and unless it was damage created on purpose we would have gone out and fixed at no charge due to the warranty his system had until September 2015. All these supposed claims were brought to light after the customer received his last statement with his past due balance and the remainder of the contract fulfillment fee after he requested to cancel. We feel we have gone through extieme lengths to try and salvage this account not only by servicing equipment and by enduring multiple calls where we were yelled at and insulted for reasons that were out of our control also not to mention we waived late fees for the months that we have provided services and not been paid for. Finally it is our customers who make us and we want to make sure that we try to accommodate them within reason, we feel that waiving the past due fee is our comprise with this account and we are also prepared to let them make payments towards there contract fulfillment fee and will keep account out of collections just as long payment arrangements are made_ I have provided additional documentation to support are findings in this account, of course we would like to come to an agreement and hopefully find a resolution. it should also be noted that the account has not been cancelled due to failure of submission of written cancelation, it should be noted that we need this returned and signed as soon as possible so we can turn offal) services. Thank you for taking the time to review this case and we hope we have been helpful, if any questions and or concerns arise please feel free to contact me directly.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 13, 2016/01/14) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
Due to a pending lawsuit that has been filed in Riverside County California, 3 complaints to the City of Palm Springs ie Police, Licensing and City Attorney and under advisement of our attorney we cannot comment any further. Please consider this complaint closed.
Final Consumer Response /* (2000, 14, 2016/01/15) */