If you’re an account slammer, your day of reckoning may have come. Monitronics is protecting customers against security system scams.
Monitronics and ADT have teamed up to fight corrupt business practices by door-to-door salespeople, filing six separate lawsuits against the salespeople themselves.
“Account slamming” is a security industry term typically referring to the behavior of sales people who pressure consumers with offers of a free home security system or free alarm system upgrade when the consumer has an existing monitored security alarm provider. They often resort to untruths and scams to switch you from your current provider to a new one. The lies they tell can be blatant, often stating your current security provider is out of business or claims that your “analog security system will stop working.”
The person who pays the highest price for slamming is you. You can end up with two bills, two contracts, faulty equipment, broken equipment, and other frustrations that can take months to sort out.
In response, Monitronics, ADT, and many other industry players have teamed up to create a code of conduct for door-to-door sales people. The goal is to have a uniform code of ethics in place by next summer.
“Everyone has been hurt by summer slamming and we want this code to have a real impact on behavior in 2010,” said Monitronics Vice President Bob Sherman. “This will be a voluntary set of guidelines for everyone in the alarm protection industry and it has the potential to make a difference and help all of our customers.”
The lawsuits are a punitive way to deal with the slammers. Monitronics has filed three suits this summer and ADT filed three in September, according to Security Systems News. We’ll be keeping tabs on these as time elapses and keep on writing about them, as well as the progress of the code of ethics.
