Complaint Review: Cen Com Inc

I joined Alarm Services in October shortly after I moved. I paid for one year of services up front per their requirements ($255.35), and shipping for my rental of a cellular device. The initial setup process seemed simple enough and they shipped me the cellular device to hook up to my alarm panel. I hooked up this device to my panel and nothing happened. The devices LEDs did not come on. It did nothing. After speaking to Alarm Services I had to pay another $18.95 for them to ship a power supply for the device. After hooking up the power supply I called into test it and the technician I needed to work with for programing was not available. I made an appointment to work with him and when that time came I was unable to test because the server I needed to communicate with was down for maintenance. At this point I should have known there was a larger issue.

I was never able to get their device to work with my system. I don't know if the device was bad or if it was just not compatible with my panel. The issue is not my panel as Alarm Services claims. I was able to replace their monitoring and setup communication with another provider in a matter of hours.

After spending 90 days trying to get communications established with Alarm Services they billed my account $100 for not using the provided equipment. They began calling me trying to collect this amount. At each call they assured me they would drop the charge when communication was established. The calls became harassing in nature as time went on. I was a customer who was having an issue and they wanted more money from me for it. Again at this point I should have known there was a larger issue.

Finally I decided to close my account in February. My first attempt to cancel my services was denied by Alarm Services even though I used their online form. I had to request cancellation a second time and fill out another form to get a cancellation code and then call them. This was past my 90 day money back period and even though I was never able to establish communication with their provided equipment and they provided me no monitoring services Alarm Services concluded that I was only eligible for an $11 refund of the $274.30 I had paid them. Their position is that each month they were unable to serve me as customer is being billed at double the rate because I did not use a full year of no service. I was told I had 14 days to send back the rented device at my cost which I did. Only a few days into my 14 days, they billed my account $300 for not returning it. Once again I began receiving collection calls.

It has been more then a month since they confirmed receiving the cellular device back, but they will not pay me my $11 because I don't agree that it is the correct amount.

When I explained that I was interested in using my consumer protections and would have my bank issue a charge back they responded by threatening me with damage to my credit score and another $50 fee for having a charge back.

Alarm Services is a terrible, not customer focused company. I made an error selecting them. I hope my story prevents some others from having to deal with them.