Monitronics International I feel your pain. Monitronics is completely unethical. Dallas Texas
I have already made a report, but when I read some of the newer ones, I had to respond.
I sent a registered letter, return-receipt requested, telling them to communicate with me ONLY by mail. They continued to call me two to three times a DAY! I told them I was filing a report with the FCC, which I did. The rep I talked to said (incorrectly) that she was still allowed to call me once a day!! And, no matter what, they all insisted they never received anything I sent. No fax, no letter ever made it according to them. I started sending everything certified mail, but you have to get the physical address to do that.
Wow, sounds SO familiar.
I initiated calls for a while to try to get it resolved.
I discovered that I had not been monitored only intermittently for most of an 18-month period! They called me and tried to collect a late payment (it had actually been made) and I asked them to stay on while I tested the system since it went off the day before and nobody came. It didn't work.
According to the rep, it didn't work because they didn't have my "new" phone number. I had it for 18 months, and guess what??? It's the number he just CALLED me on, so how could they not have it? I kept asking him questions about this, because none of it made sense. Finally, he started crying and hung up on me. I called back and the woman who answered covered the phone and whispered "It's HER! It's HER!" and hung up. Geez!
I tried to work with them. I really just wanted out of the contract. They were impossible to work with somehow I was in a three-year agreement because I didn't cancel 90 days ahead (actually, I did, but they somehow didn't receive my cancellation (how conveeennniiient). ANY concession on their part would have worked, but they started threatening me with an entry on my credit report. Now I was furious. They didn't do their job, and now they expected me to pay for service I didn't receive. I told them they would lose any leverage with me or any chance of ever seeing a penny from me if they put anything on my credit, but they did. I contested it, but the credit bureau left it on. They showed bills that looked as if I owed. I put a note on the entry. It can't hurt me too much if it's the only negative thing on there. It's really a point of honor not to give those $%^l()*&*%^ any money.
Now, when they call every month or so and cheerfully ask when I will pay the bill, I vary my responses. Sometimes I say "Hey, look out the window! Are any pigs flying where you are? No? Well, call me when there are." Or, "Let me look at my calendar. I can pay you . . . NEVER." Then I just wait. They say some more stuff and I just say "NEVER. I will NEVER pay Monitronics a penny."
I would join a class action suit if there were an appropriate action. They were definitely wrong to keep calling when I sent a certified letter instructing them to communicate by mail only. They could conceivably be charged up to 1,000 per offense. It infuriates me that they do this stuff with impunity.
Karen
Austin, Texas
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Mi Escapee
Carrollton,Texas,
U.S.A.
STAY AWAY FROM MONITRONICS!!
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Mon, September 08, 2008
Monitronics is a poor company to work for OR do business with
I am a former tenured employee of Monitronics who managed to escape that dreadful place a while back. Being there a decade, I have no idea how the company has survived all those years. I've seen some serious disorganization and incompetence all the way up to senior management, but it has only gotten worse. I've worked directly for Directors and VPs as well as Supervisors, Managers, Trainers and agents, and I have to admit the ones working the hardest (ie: the phone agents and supervisors) are the most miserable.
There is postively no support, if you bring something to the attention of a manager or director, nothing ever gets done except for hollow promises. Good people have been fired for lame reasons. When I say lame, I mean REALLY lame. For example, a manager (one of the few left at that time that actually new what real leadership is all about) uncovered a tremendous amount of bad debt that wasn't being reported. He found this as a result of the persistence of an outside company we paid nearly a million dollars to come in and try to straighten out our inadequacies. He HAD to get the reporting straightened out for them, so in the process he came across this 'surprise'. He takes it to his senior management with a sincere passion to reveal something that could really bring the company down if our investors knew about this. What happened? He was terminated within days, being told that they didn't have a reason for letting him go, he is just being 'laid off'. He was given a fat severence to hopefully keep his mouth shut and they even offered to help him find another job. Within weeks, they even dissolved the department which was the source of the reporting and are now using the fake reports that he originally had to fix. Another employee had a similar experience - she was a manager and found out the company was reporting false numbers pertaining to the number of dealers we have.
The more there are, the better our bottom line appears. She kept bringing it to the attention of her superiors and wouldn't let up until it was fixed. Guess what, within days she too was fired...being told that they 'didn't like where her managerial inquiries were headed'. Another employee in workforce management was FORCED to change numbers on a report that goes directly to the CEO. She couldn't sleep for weeks and is looking for a new job before it comes back to haunt her.
Moral on the call center floors are at a all time low, but you can't tell that to the manager, director or vp - they think everything is fine and that the employees are the ones who are just whining. I guess that is why we have lost supervisors and trainers left and right because they had to get out of that toxic company.
It is so sad, the company could have been great, but they bring in people who compromise integrity and ethics at a drop of a hat and treat their employees like crap. They put no pride in the 24 hour call center floor. The facility these phone reps work in is so fithly - everywhere you look there is stained and worn out carpet, stained cubicles, chairs that are dirty and mis matched with fabric peeling back. While the executive floor is pristine, clean and kept up.
Not too long ago, the company split into two enitities...Monitronics International INC, and Monitronics International LP. It just so happens that the upper senior officers (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc) are all under the Inc umbrella, while the rest of the employees are under LP. So if and when the company folds, who do think will be protected? Hmmm....
The deal with the fudging of numbers and firing left and right is becoming more widely known in that place. They are getting careless. But, management is beligerant, they live in their happy world of denial or just flat out lack of concern and draw a pay check while our customers continue to recieve lousy service and can't get timely assistance or consistent answers due to lack of proper training and follow through.
Even though I have been with the company for so long, I cannot believe how poor that place is..not only are the employees miserable, but the MASSIVE amounts of complaints you can easily find anywhere on the net is proof of just how badly run that place is.
To top is off, there is now a website created for past and current employees that is not affiliated with Monitronics, but is a support site for Monitronics employees helping them identify the symptoms of anxiety, stress and depression.
I came across it ( http://monitronics.freerelaxation.org ) and couldn't believe what I was seeing. As one employee mentioned on that site, it is just a matter of time before we see Monitronics on the news.