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On 16 May 2007 11:24:48 -0700, kishbeach@gmail.com wrote:
>
>They have increased their rate last month by $5 for the residents of
>Fremont California. When you ask for canceling your service, they say
>that the 2-year contract that you signed five years ago, are
>automatically re-newed by itself each year on the anniversary date of
>your contract. You are stuck with their rate increase and they have
>forced you their services if you miss a tiny 30 day cancellation
>period.
I'm not a lawyer, by any means.... I doubt you have any chance at a
class action, because even though there are many people in your
general situation, most were ready to pay the higher price, and most
of the rest cancelled according to their procedure, and most of the
rest do not want to bother with a lawsuit. The amount to be recovered
won't be very much, unless there's something I am missing, so you'll
have to pay a lawyer, and the rest of the class won't want to chip in
on that. I suspect you cannot have a class action in small claims
court.
It's also very possible that you won't find another company you like
better. They may all charge for verified response now, and any reason
you picked this company in the first place might still apply. So if
you cannot find a better place, you may want to stay where you are.
Or, you might have a chance to cancel the contract, maybe, maybe.
What you probably have is a contract of adhesion, one that the
corporation writes and which you have no chance to negotiate or modify
before signing. If there is an ambiguity in a contract of adhesion,
such ambiguities are usually interpreted against the party who wrote
the contract, not you, so that might help. So if you can come up with
any way to interpret that clause or another one so the contract
doesn't require you to cancel when they say it does, even if most
would say they meant what they say they mean, if it could possibly
mean something better for you, that could help you a lot.
Even if you could negotiate some of the terms, like will they monitor
for fire as well as burglars (is that negotiable?) you probably had no
chance to negotiate the cancellation terms (although they may say that
you could have, or they may agree that you couldn't have. Did you
try?) Regardless of whether you tried or not, a small claims court
may decide not to enforce that clause, but IANAL.
If you give them 30 days notice and stop paying at the start of the
next payment period following the 30 days, they might dun you or send
the rest of the contract to a collection agency, and they might sue
you or report you to a credit bureau. The credit bureau thing would
be bad, I think even if you later win in court. Thne suing would be
bad if the contract requires you to pay legal fees. Property leases
often do, but I do not know about this.
So I'd suggest you do not stop paying unless they agree to it. I
would suggest that you give them 30 days notice, certified mail return
receipt, and politely tell them you are cancelling and giving 30 days
notice (do not include any of this EVIL nonsense) and ask them if they
will let you out of the contract.Ask them to do it for the sake of
customer goodwill.** Keep your own copy of the letter. Then you can
change to the new company. Do you get monthly bills, or are you
expected to pay without getting a bill? If the former, which seems
most likely, if they continue to send you bills, call them up and talk
to the clerk's supervisor and say you are not using their service
anymore, as of such date, and you had asked to cancel, and "Would you
let me do so?" Note the time and date that you called. If he says no,
or continues to send bills, .I'd pay them. Then when the contract
period is over, you can sue them to get your money back. This way you
cannot damage your credit. There won't even be on the credit report a
complaint about you and a notation that you won in court later, if you
do. Because you will have paid. Bring to court the bills from the
other company that run simultaneously with the first company's bills.
Otherwsise the court will figure you were paying the first company and
using its service. That's more likely than what I am suggesting. And
the court will give you nothing.
And maybe some way to show you cannot use to monitoring companies at
the same time, although maybe the judge will alreday know that.
**They won't actually be losing any money, unlike a landlord who would
if someone breaks a lease and he has to advertise again, or paint
again. I never know if it helps or hurts to point out someone isn't
going to be losing any money. I think it depends on who you are
talking to, if he's a rationalist, or if he is annoyed when someone
else is. I do not know who it is more likely to meet.
Make sure that the amount on the rest of the contract when you cancel
is less than the limit you can sue for in small claims court.
This means if you lose in court, you'll have paid twice.
Sort of related: I once visited my brother, who had bought a house but
not signed up with any alarm company. When I was testing the siren,
which I thought he might want to use even if had no monitoring
company, it worked. I turned it off and went to go bike riding.
Maybe 10 or 15 minutes after the siren, the police showed up, just as
I was leaving. Even though my brother had never signed up, the alarm
company still called the police, even though they hadn't been paid for
almost a year. (If there was verification in effect -- probably was
-- they couldn't have called me because my brother had a different
phone number from the previous owner.)
>
>I'm going to see a lawyer to file a class action lawsuit against
>Integrated Alarm Services Group. They can not force us to pay extra $5
>charge for their so called "added security/verified response". They
>need to stop being EVIL. If they were a decent company they would have
>asked the customers to opt-in for the added security and give the
>customers a choice if they want to opt-in or not. But, apparently they
>are forcing the customers and all the Fremont, California (and Modesto
>Calif.) to opt-in to their rate increase.
>
>Also, their content of their service contract is evil. After a two
>year contact, it automatically gets re-newed for the next 12 month and
>you only have a tiny 30 day period to cancel the next year's contract,
>and if you miss it, guess what, you are stuck with them.
>
>Avoid these crooks if you can.
>
>Regards,
>Kish
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Re: Integrated Alarms, Inc. are Evil , be aware!!!
