Re: New 10 digit dialing problems

["Bob Worthy" <securinc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"J. Sloud" <jsloud@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:p4f262llrkh7lttre0o36qm8rjnbv705po@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Mon, 8 May 2006 11:34:44 -0400, "Bob Worthy"
> <securinc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I was personally involved in the project.  Slink may have done that
> before the acquisition.

That is what I said. "Slink walked away from approx. 7,000 accts". I didn't
say, ADT walked away from 7,000 Slink accts.

  The only ADT customers that were not
> converted were customers that could not be reached, refused the
> serrvice, etc.

How many was that? What happened to them? Are the ones that couldn't be
reached still being billed? Do they think they are still being monitored?

 > ADT didn't just stop billing customers under contract.

Even though ADT couldn't monitor them? Did a termination letter go out for
not complying with the terms of their contract or did they just keep
receiving a bill? Might lead the customer to believe they were still being
monitored.

> Letters were sent to all of the customer base explaining the 10 digit
> switch and why it was necessary.

Which was necessary to set up the initial service call, but that doesn't
close the book on an account that the customer still thinks is active.

 >The list was generated from MAS from
> the active customer pool.

Being from the old school, I find these sort of statements funny. Programs
are only as good as the people entering the data and how the information has
been maintained. A computer can only tell you what it thinks is true by the
information someone has fed it or left in it when the info should have been
deleted. It is sort of like clean a house. The less you do of it, the more
cluttered it gets. When you finally get around to cleaning, you find all
those socks you thought the washer ate.

> It is quite possible that you "took over"
> an account that was never correctly discontinued by your new-found
> customer and thus never taken out of the monitoring system.

Quite possible, however, I find it a strange business policy to leave a non
paying customer in an active status. I bought the account from a company
that had the account for serveral years prior to me taking it over. I had
it, and still do, for several years from the time I bought it. It would seem
to me that if ADT would not have receive a payment on an account, for lets
say seven or eight years, nor had the customer received a bill from ADT for
the same period, it would lend one to believe ADT had nothing to do with
that account for more years than some companies are in business.
But.....thank you for reiterating my belief on how data entry and
maintaining account information is most important.

Let me give another example of how the ADT account managing was handled. I
have another customer that, when and only when his contract was up with ADT,
changed over to our service. We changed out his equipment to modern day
equipment because his house looked like some sort of old commercial
application with a huge board of these old modules, etc etc etc. About a
year later I got a call from the house manager about a false alarm. No alarm
from central on that account. Police error? Don't know. The next week the
same thing, twice in one day. No alarm from that acount at my CS. Now, there
are fines from the PD. Called PD dispatch and the alarms were dispatched by
ADT. Hmmmmm! Different panel, different account number. Nice data entry,
nice test signals from installer on that account number, where is the data,
from the new location, using an old account number go, what about dispatch
to the new location, where the alarm was actually generated from, nice
deletion of customer that properly canceled account. Why would a non paying
account stay active for a year? If I wouldn't have found out where this was
coming from, he may have had many more false alarms and fines. Lets face it,
a company the size of ADT is bound to have mistakes made every day. The
problem is that, these type of mistakes can have serious serious
consequences. You can claim the government, international and Fortune 500
accounts all you want, and they may be handled with kid gloves to make sure
you don't have a disaster, but as far as number of accounts, those type
accounts make up a very small percentage of ADT's exposure. Every one here
has similar stories concerning experiences from ADT customers. I am not
picking on you, your comments or your employer. We all know ADT is a corner
stone of the industry and drives the market. I am just more of a realist
than to say everything is rosey.