Re: question about burglar alarm dispute (San Francisco Bay Area)

["Roland Moore" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Do you have a dish for TV service that uses a phone line? Do you have any
other telephone dialers (a.k.a FAX machines)? A daily test timer for an
alarm panel at 1:43 PM is not typical. Since a properly wired alarm would
disconnect all other phones, scheduling it for daytime calling would be
problematic for most customers. Is the time set correctly in the alarm
system? Daily test timers mean daily. You are never home during the day
(even on weekends)? You don't notice your phone "off hook" or out of service
for an hour or so every day? Do you live where there is common access to a
phone pedestal or other IDF or IW (inside wire) panel? Did someone with only
cell service 'dog tick' off your phone service for their dish or other data
signals?
If the alarm panel is the problem, here is what what might be happening. The
alarm panel dials the alarm central station receiver and the receiver picks
up (answers). At that point the call is complete for AT&T billing purposes.
Then the panel attempts to send the data and fails to get a 'kiss off' from
the reveiver; the communicator could be going deaf and not hear the ack
(acknowledgement) tone; the phone lines are dirty and the siganl is
scrambled; the receiver answers, but gives hold tones to the panel in the
queue for too long. The panel then repeats the calling process. Perhaps at
some point the signal finally reaches the receiver or there should be an FTC
(Fail To Communicate) signal on the panel or there should be a LTT (Late To
Test) signal from the alarm company. It would be unusual for the panel to
dial for that long a period (almost an hour) unless it was set for unlimited
dialing attempts (not typical). There are too many unanswered questions to
know for certain what is going on exactly.
If the alarm is now dialing an 800 number it should not be generating any
tolls (unless the back up phone number is not an 800 number too). The alarm
compnay made this 800 number change remotely? They never checked the alarm
system event buffer? Never set the correct time? Never checked the test
timer schedule? As for paying the bill that would depend on what the alarm
company reported and recommended, and when the alarm company did it; and
what you may have chosen to ignore or omit from your post here.


<hotister@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9961b5cb-f039-4536-8bc6-150cdb0f2f14@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi dear all:
>
> We recently got involved with a dispute with a burglar alarm company
> (in San Francisco Bay Area), and I hope this is the right place to
> post this question.
>
> On our AT&T phone bill last month we noticed that we have a long list
> of "automated" long distance phone calls dialing to a area code (408)
> phone number. These phone calls happened on daily basis and always
> start from 1:43pm and would continue to dial until 2:39pm (for about
> one hour, and call every one minute). At first we didn't think of it's
> a problem from our burglar alarm company, so we called AT&T and they
> put these calls on dispute for us. The next month, we noticed the same
> thing again, so we called AT&T again and they told us that it seems
> the phone number is a fax/computer type of phone number, they also
> asked whether we have some kind of alarm system, so we started to talk
> to our alarm company. The alarm company did some investigation, then
> got back to us saying that these phone calls were made by the alarm
> system for automated testing, as all these calls were never actually
> went through, so the modem kept on trying to make those automated
> testing calls. However, they did mention that they have another 4-5
> customers who also had this problem before and the problem seems to be
> related to really old modem (on the residence side, not the modems on
> their company side), so they suggested that we should upgrade the
> modem in our house (the current one was provided and installed by
> them), and they also switched the 408 long distance number to a 1-800
> number. They continue to say that we should dispute these phone calls
> with AT&T and they are NOT willing to pay for these phone bills
> (currently there are about $390 due to
>
> Some questions:
>
> 1. From the technical side, who should be really responsible for these
> phone calls? I know that we shouldn't, but we also don't know from the
> technical side whether AT&T or the alarm company should be responsible
> for this $390. Could someone please give us some "technical details"
> about how this type of automated dialing system works (for burglar
> alarm systems)? If, according to the alarm company, that these
> automated dialing (from our home modem) never went through, why would
> AT&T has a record on their computer and still charge us?
>
> 2. Is there any regulate agency for burglar alarm companies? If this
> is the alarm company's fault and they should be responsible for the
> $390 bill, other than the BBB (better business bureau), is there any
> other places that we could file a complain against this alarm company?
>