Complaint Review: Maximum Security Alarm

Today, June 29, 2011, I receive a notice entitled:  "RE: FINAL NOTICE" from this company.

Naturally, despite their statement of "recent multiple attempts to reach you," no such attempts had ever been made, up until this document was received.

Some perspective.  In early 2010, I bought into their alarm service, with the full knowledge that I was going to shortly sell my home.  I asked this company repeatedly at the time; I knew I was going to be moving within a year, so I made sure I had the information that their service was transferable.

Anyway, eventually the "I"s are dotted, "T"s are crossed, the stars align, and I'm ready to start the process of selling my home.  Here the trouble starts.

From the looks of my own email logs, I contacted this customer repeatedly, knowing that I wanted to, and was able to transfer the contract to the buyer of my home, and seeking information on how, exactly to do it, in order to forward said information to my realtor, who would forward it to my buyer's realtor, and on to my buyer.  Even the first time it was tediously annoying process.

The first time I was literally told, "nothing to it, just have her call this number once she's moved in and give us her name, state the address and that she's taking over, and you're done."   Naturally, this didn't work.  Fortunately, my buyer didn't wait until move-in day to do it.

Compounding this cascading error, there was yet another company involved, Monitronics, whom I was in simultaneous conversation with (the nature of this relationship seems rather vague).  The next sign of trouble was when Maximum Security told me my buyer needed to call Monitronics, and the next day, through the cascading chain of Realtors holding me and the buyer at arms length, I was told the buyer did so...and Monitronics insisted she had to contact Maximum Security.

But we persevered, not nearly as forcefully as it seems we should have it seems.  I called again, I called both of them, I wrote down directions, I passed them on, and the next day I was told, "nope, that didn't work either."

Finally, on april 25, 2011, I was told, by my realtor, in an email that yep, the latest directions I'd provided actually succeeded, it was a done deal, no problem.

But since I'm here, it's fairly obvious that was not the case.  Nope, instead I have a $1500 bill in my hands for prematurely cancelling the contract.  Naturally I've called them and complained, not only about my "FINAL" notice also being my first; not only about the bald-faced lie about "multiple attempts" to reach me, but because they've clearly made the process by which to transfer a contract so nebulous that I doubt they themselves know how to do it.