So, about a year ago, at about 2am or so, before Joe was leaving for a week long work trip across the country, we decided to call ADT and see what installation and service was to have our home protected. The lady we dealt with was really nice and sweet and made us feel good, saying she could send someone the next day to install and we would be up and running just in time. Great great great! At the time I suppose we(I) were(was) feel ing very vulnerable. Not only is going from living in a Brooklyn brownstone to an isolated beach community a change of pace, we also had some issues in trusting someone who knew us and what we had. I just wanted to feel safe, so why not trust technology to do this for me? (ugh)
So ffwd about a week or two after we had our service installed and every time we left the house/set the alarm we had a call within 20 minutes that the alarm went off. The first two times we actually turned around — was someone really casing the joint and broke in that quickly after we left? wtf? Each time the house was fine.. so it must have been a glitch, who knows.
So anyway, this ended up happening time and time again .. we have a cat and a small dog, they assured us that the sensor would not pick up on anything under 100 lbs.. well, It was Pippen (the cat) and we ended up having to have a technician come back out (I’m sure we can all agree how freaking annoying it is to have technician window appointments to begin with) — so he comes out, and is weird, as always, and is telling us that since our house is really only 3 rooms that there is nothing he can do for us, but put the sensor in one of the bedrooms, which most likely, a robber, would come into one of the bedrooms to “look for jewelry” — so we ended up putting the sensor in that room, we were also instructed to put anything valuable in there before we left the house. Like, ok? so every time I leave my house I need to go around and gather all my valuable stuff and hoard it into one room? This sounds like a paranoid roller coaster.
SOoOOooo.. of course, the cat still trips the alarm in there, and we end up being at the movies one time it happens, and since ADT can’t get us on our cell the second it happens, they send a cop, which finds no weird behavior, and then we proceed to get BILLED from Toms River Police Department for a “False Alarm” — $100.00! Like, WHAT? what if there was someone in there? how is ADT and TRPD the ones that get to decide what we owe and what for…. I’m annoyed. So we stop using the alarm. It’s becoming more of a job than just worrying about whether or not you are getting broken into. I’ll also add at this point Joe has stopped traveling for work and our nemesis has moved so I am feeling safer anyway on a daily basis. Oh, I’ll also add since the “Restore the Shore” thing has been going on down here we have lived in a constant state of construction work. So there are strange men just walking around our house day in and day out. We have a port-a-potty or two lined up to our property, whenever I go to grab the mail or hang laundry I get hollered or whistled at. Just over it.. all these strangers having opinions and cat-calling.
Okay now I am feeling like the last place I should write about this is online.. also I just had a customer who said “just so you know, there was a break in a few blocks away last night..” like, really?
So when summer comes and we put the AC unit in our bedroom window, we basically stop using the alarm ever because if you have a window open you have to “by-pass” the window to set the alarm and its a really big pain in the ass so we stop. We don’t get broken into. Life continues on. So does our $50.00 a month charge. Imagine if we had been putting that aside for like, health care? For us, or for the animals? We’ve paid $1,100.00 for an ADT alarm that has caused us more paranoia and stress then getting broken into possibly could have.
So I ask Joe a few times if he could please call and cancel our service. It’s not feasible in our home and we don’t use it, what’s the point. So he does.. and they end up slamming us with a $520.00 charge to cancel. I am just so fed up right now I don’t even feel like writing about it. But we are struggling so hard with money the last thing we need is to pay this ridiculous amount for a piece of shit undependable service that has taken up so much time and energy this past year. I’m pissed and ADT can suck it because they suck. If we kept out three year contract we would have paid much more than $520.00 but still, what pieces of shit making us pay that when they are huge corporation that sucks and we are two little poor nobodies who can’t deal with what’s in front of us to begin with and now this. I’m just pissed pissed pissed.
“For a company that’s supposed to make their customers feel safe and secure I felt anything but that with you guys” – Joe on the phone 😉
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