Recent Review For Protection One Alarms (con't):
Review For Protection One Alarms (Con't)
This customer review has been submitted anonymously by a present or former Protection One alarm client. Please remember that many of these companies have thousands of other clients that may or may not be happy with their service, and this is only a small sampling of the opinions of their customers. If you have had a good or bad experience with this or any other alarm company, please submit your review! Reviews are only edited for spam and/or vulgar language. Thanks for submitting your review!
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Protection One is probably the worst alarm company you could ever choose to do business with. They are liars, they refuse to abide by the language in their own contracts and the employees that you have to deal with when you have a dispute are just plain rude and hateful. My company used Protection One to monitor our manufacturing facility for eleven years. I never had any reason to suspect during that time that they were into using unethical bullying tactics on their customers until I decided that we didn't need their services anymore.
Here is what happened: They sent us a notice in our monthly statement saying they were going to raise our monthly fee by a little over five dollars per month. Five dollars is nothing to me, but, since we never turned the alarm on, ever, I decided I would just cancel the service. When I attempted to do that I was informed that I would have continue paying the monthly fee for another six months, until June. Because the contract stated that unless we cancelled within thirty days of our sign up anniversary that we would be liable for another whole year. They were correct on that point and I would have written them a check for the remaining months except for one reason, the contract had a whole lot more to say.
For starters, it was written into the contract that Protection One could raise the rates once a year but if they did they had to notify the customer at least thirty days in advance of it taking effect. They also wrote into the contract that if the customer refused to pay the extra fee and sent them a cancellation noticed within thirty days of the start date the contract would no longer be in force. We sent them a letter within the thirty days saying that we were not going to pay the extra and that we were cancelling the service. They had their representatives call us to tell us that the contract really didn't mean what it said and that we would have to continue to pay the monthly fee until June. The person that takes care of accounts payable called them to dispute their interpretation of the contract and was met by rudeness and threats. As the president of the company I was not happy to hear how my employee had been treated by the agents of a company that we had paid a lot of money to over the past eleven years. So, I called them myself and ended up being connected to a woman named "Megan". Before I began my conversation with her I informed her that the conversation would be recorded. She said she would have to get permission from her boss before she could allow that. What an idiot, in Oregon the law states that only one of the parties need know that a conversation is being recorded so I was not under any legal obligation to inform her in the first place, I did it as a courtesy so she could watch what she said. I still have the tape. She must have forgotten part way through the conversation because she became just plain rude and attempted to use intimidating bully tactics. I told her not to even think about turning our company into any credit reporting agencies since were well within our rights to cancel the service as spelled out in their contract. Her response was that that was exactly what she was going to do. At this point I had not done any research on the Protection One but after talking to "Megan" I did some checking on them. I found out that they had been fined $125,000.00 by the state of Oregon for similar practices that they were trying to use on me! I made a copy of the judgment from the Oregon Attorney Generals office and wrote across the top after highlighting the similarities with a yellow marker, "You guys, never learn do you!?" Then I wrote them a letter asking that they acknowledge the fact that my company is no longer using them. I also told them not to call me on the phone but to contact me by email and I gave them the address. (I wanted to make sure I had written proof of any future dealing with them) . I also told them that if they thought they were right and I was wrong that they could take me to court and if the court ruled in their favor I would pay them what I owed. They never did send me an acknowledgment and they haven't sent any more billing statements either.
Nancy Kroll, from Protection One, wrote the following rebuttle to the reviews previous to this one. She said:
"I am the Manager of Executive Customer Relations for Protection One. As such, I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to anyone that has had an issue with us that has not been responded to. Protection One prides itself on providing the very best in Customer Service and our goal is to reach a fair and equitable resolution to the customer's issue. I would be very happy to review any complaint that a consumer might have, past or present".
That is a lie. They will work with you, yes, but only to try and get you to agree that they are right and you are wrong! Everything their agents told me was just plain wrong but if I would have sent them the money, they would gladly have taken it! I will give them this, I think they are smart enough to know when someone was serious about calling their bluff. In the case of our company it wasn't the five hundred dollars we would have had to pay them until June, that is chicken feed, It was the idea of dealing with bullies that was so galling! Believe me, we were prepared to spend an enormous amount if necessary to teach them a lesson. Of course we would have gone for attorney and court fees and probably would have prevailed on that.
So, Don't use them, there are other reputable outfits to choose from!
3 Month Update:
Protection One finally resolved my case, but I had to deal with many threatening phone calls before they finally conceded that I was correct in the reading of my contract. I have to say the process should not have taken more than one or two phone calls at the most! I stand by my original assertion that Protection One should be avoided!
Here is what happened: They sent us a notice in our monthly statement saying they were going to raise our monthly fee by a little over five dollars per month. Five dollars is nothing to me, but, since we never turned the alarm on, ever, I decided I would just cancel the service. When I attempted to do that I was informed that I would have continue paying the monthly fee for another six months, until June. Because the contract stated that unless we cancelled within thirty days of our sign up anniversary that we would be liable for another whole year. They were correct on that point and I would have written them a check for the remaining months except for one reason, the contract had a whole lot more to say.
For starters, it was written into the contract that Protection One could raise the rates once a year but if they did they had to notify the customer at least thirty days in advance of it taking effect. They also wrote into the contract that if the customer refused to pay the extra fee and sent them a cancellation noticed within thirty days of the start date the contract would no longer be in force. We sent them a letter within the thirty days saying that we were not going to pay the extra and that we were cancelling the service. They had their representatives call us to tell us that the contract really didn't mean what it said and that we would have to continue to pay the monthly fee until June. The person that takes care of accounts payable called them to dispute their interpretation of the contract and was met by rudeness and threats. As the president of the company I was not happy to hear how my employee had been treated by the agents of a company that we had paid a lot of money to over the past eleven years. So, I called them myself and ended up being connected to a woman named "Megan". Before I began my conversation with her I informed her that the conversation would be recorded. She said she would have to get permission from her boss before she could allow that. What an idiot, in Oregon the law states that only one of the parties need know that a conversation is being recorded so I was not under any legal obligation to inform her in the first place, I did it as a courtesy so she could watch what she said. I still have the tape. She must have forgotten part way through the conversation because she became just plain rude and attempted to use intimidating bully tactics. I told her not to even think about turning our company into any credit reporting agencies since were well within our rights to cancel the service as spelled out in their contract. Her response was that that was exactly what she was going to do. At this point I had not done any research on the Protection One but after talking to "Megan" I did some checking on them. I found out that they had been fined $125,000.00 by the state of Oregon for similar practices that they were trying to use on me! I made a copy of the judgment from the Oregon Attorney Generals office and wrote across the top after highlighting the similarities with a yellow marker, "You guys, never learn do you!?" Then I wrote them a letter asking that they acknowledge the fact that my company is no longer using them. I also told them not to call me on the phone but to contact me by email and I gave them the address. (I wanted to make sure I had written proof of any future dealing with them) . I also told them that if they thought they were right and I was wrong that they could take me to court and if the court ruled in their favor I would pay them what I owed. They never did send me an acknowledgment and they haven't sent any more billing statements either.
Nancy Kroll, from Protection One, wrote the following rebuttle to the reviews previous to this one. She said:
"I am the Manager of Executive Customer Relations for Protection One. As such, I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to anyone that has had an issue with us that has not been responded to. Protection One prides itself on providing the very best in Customer Service and our goal is to reach a fair and equitable resolution to the customer's issue. I would be very happy to review any complaint that a consumer might have, past or present".
That is a lie. They will work with you, yes, but only to try and get you to agree that they are right and you are wrong! Everything their agents told me was just plain wrong but if I would have sent them the money, they would gladly have taken it! I will give them this, I think they are smart enough to know when someone was serious about calling their bluff. In the case of our company it wasn't the five hundred dollars we would have had to pay them until June, that is chicken feed, It was the idea of dealing with bullies that was so galling! Believe me, we were prepared to spend an enormous amount if necessary to teach them a lesson. Of course we would have gone for attorney and court fees and probably would have prevailed on that.
So, Don't use them, there are other reputable outfits to choose from!
3 Month Update:
Protection One finally resolved my case, but I had to deal with many threatening phone calls before they finally conceded that I was correct in the reading of my contract. I have to say the process should not have taken more than one or two phone calls at the most! I stand by my original assertion that Protection One should be avoided!