ADT House Alarm, not fit for purpose, please help!

mikeyboy

Hello All,

Ok, quick update and more advice required.....

ADT have now sent out five different engineers due to the frequency of false alarms. Yesterday I had a phone call saying the alarm had been activated, luckily I was just round the corner. Got home, the siren wasn't even going off inside! The siren is supposed to go off for 20 minutes!

They have already tried changing a PIR, moved the internal sounder all of which have left holes in the plaster, generally shoddy workmanship etc.

I must have had literally 12+ false alarms in less than 6 weeks.

I rang the customer services and made a further formal complaint on Friday, was promised a call back Monday and..you guessed it.... No call!

I really have had enough, I want the system removing, refund of my money and the monitoring contract to be cancelled.

What rights doIhave here? Are there any sample letters I can use as a template in this situation?

Many thanks

fluffnutter

State your problems, giving dates if possible. Advise what you want to happen. I'd suggest

Dear Company

I had X installed on Y date by Z. Since then I've had the following problems <list them in bullet points>.

I believe the service has failed to meet reasonable expectations and as such I'd like the system removing, a full refund and cancellation of the monitoring contract (again with full monies refunded).

Yours Mikeyboy

And take it from there. They might want to negotiate and you might need to get arsey (e.g. threaten them with the small claims court) but I'd suggest this is your opening gambit.

fluffnutter

And don't forget to mention the twirling dusts!

mikeyboy

Many thanks, I'll certainly mention the twirling dusts!

messyhead

I'm now a bit worried after reading your posts.

Did you get anywhere with a refund?

Normally before I buy anything, I research to make sure what I'm getting is going to be good. The ADT guy came round last week and we made an appointment last night. So he went through his spiel, and I'm thinking 'I've heard of ADT, they seem like a good company, it's a good price, and seems a good system', so we signed up to the three year deal.

A lot of the time when he was talking about the £20.99 per month fee, he kept mentioning that under the consumer credit agreement you can get out of the contract at 18months if the total cost is less then £1500. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now I wonder if it was to do with him knowing there were problems to come.

I've done a quick Google for ADT and found quite a few reviews with problems. I know that people only usually complain, and there might be just as many satisfied customers who haven't bothered to write good reviews. But I'm now a bit worried about what we've signed up to.

rmb1973

i wouldn't go near these guys. i've just moved into a house which had the alarm in already from the previous owners. We didn't pay ADT anything, but the alarm still goes off all the time and the fire brigade were round on saturday night! I rung them to get it switched off - at least for a month or so whilst we get settled in and have builders round - they've told me it's going to be about £200. If that's their attitude, it's coming off and they're never getting a penny of my cash.

i googled SSAIB/ - the security trade body, found my local security firm and they can disable the system in a non permanent way for 90 quid. This way instead of having a month or so without an alarm and then signing up to adt's subscription, ADT will get nothing from me and I have a nice ADT box on the side of my house!

stupid stupid, short sighted company.