Re: A "HUH" phone call

["Robert L Bass" <Sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Crash Gordon" wrote:

This reminds me of a funny episode in CT.

> In retrospect I guess I could remove the box and leave the detection and
> keypads up...it'd be a maintenance, trouble, false alarm free system! :-)

If you were ABC Alarm of CT you could remove most of the system and charge $40
a month for monitoring and maintenance.  That's what they did to a hardware
store in Kensington, CT.  This was many years ago.  We installed an alarm in
the owner's new home.  He and his wife liked our work so they asked me to
check out the alarm in their store.  I found the control panel screwed to a
pegboard merchandise display in the front display window of the store where
anyone with a rock could disable it in two seconds.  Motion detectors were
each mounted with a single screw, most of them hanging so loosely that a
passing truck might cause them to sway.  Wiring was wire-tied to electrical
conduit.  Some of it hung loosely from overhead beams down the walls to
keypads, etc.

Most of the zones had been shorted out at the panel during various "service"
calls after numerous false alarms.  The store owner had no key to the panel so
I had to pick the lock to find this out.  Thus, the "repairs" were clearly
ABC's work.  I guess this was a prime example of how to solve false alarms --
short out most of the sensors.

The system was so bad and the wiring so poor (visible wires to keypads and
phone connections, RJ31X installed at eye level right in the same display
window, etc.) that we completely replaced the whole system.

BTW, we never asked for the job.  I was called in by the owner because he had
been unable to get ABC to fix the alarm for months, this despite the fact he
had been paying them for monitoring and maintenance for years.  When we
finished the work, I removed ABC's trash, placed all of it in a box labeled
"ABC" and called them to pick it up.

Several days later I got a letter from the president of ABC.  He threatened
legal action for tortious interference.  This he followed up with several
phone calls, each laced with profanity and more threats.  He seemed not to
notice the periodic "beep" sound of my voice recorder on the line, nor my
statements that the calls were being recorded.

In the end he gave up without a fight.  This might have been because I told
him that we photographed and documented every one of the literally scores of
screwed up wiring and installation errors as well as the peg-board mounted
control panel.  Perhaps he decided having that material in open court might be
bad for business.  :^)