Burglar Alarm Contract - Help

dataspot

Hi All,

Has anyone had a burglar alarm contract with a company and has been denied to provide the access codes/config information upon termination of the contract?

Here is background information. I apologies in advance for the long background information.

Nearly 12 years ago my father signed a contract for installation of burglar alarm which includes monitoring and 2 x maintenance per year.

I have recently come to know about it and noticed that the company had not carried out ANY maintenance on the system throughout the 12 years until recently when I contacted them. So that's a total of only ONE maintenance records in 12 years!!! During this time the house was more or less continuously occupied so the alarm was hardly activated/used. It may come to no surprise that I have advised my father to cancel the contract.

It is my understanding that once the contract is terminated the supplier should decommission the alarm which clears them from any responsibility and provide all the necessary information such as access codes (master code, installers code, etc.), configuration of the zones, etc.

So before I terminate the contract I double checked with the supplier whether they would provide this information after the decommissioning of the alarm so that I can have all the information I need for future maintenance (whether I decide to maintain it myself or get 3rd party contractor).

To my surprise the supplier told me that they would not provide the engineer's access codes to us due to security reasons. His explanation was that because the engineers' codes are the same and they cannot compromise the security of their other clients. I could possibly break into their house and disable the alarm!!!

So next, I asked him about the information about how the system is configured. e.g. number of sensors, protected areas, zones, etc.

So he replied that this information should have been given to us at the time of installation and that he cannot provide this. My father has kept all paperwork that was sent to him relating to this contract and he does not have any config information. He was given a customer's manual which has system information page in it which should have been filled out by the installer but it is all blank.

I could not believe what was being said to me.

So in summary, I have a burglar alarm system installed, with a maintenance contract. And if contract is terminated cannot get access codes or configuration information. I would have to use the same supplier and pay them a call out charge each time I have a fault or maintenance.

I don't want to give out the company name YET but this is a very big and wel known company. This company has then subcontracted the maintenance and monitoring to a local company with whom I am having problems with.

Please help!!!

antw23uk

So what compensation are you after for the 12 years they havent been maintaining the alarm?

Im guessing the name of the company starts with an A .. it usually does :mad:

Ionkontrol

If it is in the contract that was signed, you have no legs to stand on. What does the T&C's in the contract say about end of contract/decommissioning?