Complaint Review: ADTS Pensacola - Pensacola Florida

In 2009, I had a door to door salesman come to my door after we purchased a new construction home.  I was informed that they were running a special on an advanced security system based upon a 3-year pre-paid contract. I paid 3 years in full and signed the contract.  I have since moved from this home and live in another state (Georgia).

Starting this past March 2013, I began receiving phone calls from a collection agency telling me that I am behind on my ADTS monthly payments and have now been sent to collections.  I told the agent that I had no idea what he was talking about as I distinctly remember paying in full back in 2009.  I told the collection agent that I need to speak with ADTS to further understand the situation and then call him back.

I contacted ADTS and spoke with the billing agent and she told me that I had signed a 5 year contract.  I told her that I have NO recollection of this term and if she could send me a copy of my contract where it shows 5 years, I will pay the fees owed.  She emailed me a copy of my contract and sure enough at the top it said 60 months in the initial term section and in the pre-paid section it said 36 months. She also pointed me to the fine print where bullet 3 of the fine print states "Agreement shall be for an initial term of 5 years, unless earlier terminated pursuant to the provisions hereof".

The top of the contract has two items on it, with the numbers in handwriting as shown below:

Initial Term __60__

Pre-Paid Term __36__

I acknowledged that since this was in fact my signature, I would work with the collection agency to pay it. 

This continued to eat at me as it did not make sense for a number of reasons.  There would be no motivation for me to pay 3 years pre-paid (close to $1900), just to have monthly payments kick in at the end of the 3rd year.  Secondly, within the contract there are sections for where the monthly payment prices are to be completed and all of those sections were blank; this is where I thought to myself "why would I sign a contract where I would owe monthly payments but have NO idea what the payments would end up being since this section is empty".  Lastly, I had a customer invoice showing everything was paid in full with a xero balance.

It bothered me so much that I drove from Atlanta to my storage unit in Pensacola to get my original carbon-copy paperwork.  Sure enough, someone added the number "60" AFTER I signed it back in 2009!

I called ADTS and spoke with the General Manager.  He told me that my concern with them adding the number in there is "irrelevant" because the small print says 5 years.  I told him that the second part of the small print of "unless earlier terminated pursuant to the provisions hereof" means that my 36 month contract should supersede the small print and he just continued bantering the word "irrelevant" to me.

I told this "General Manager" that I guess we are not seeing eye to eye and we will be working on this through litigation. His reply was "if you ever mention that word again on this telephone I will assure you that is exactly what we will do".  I honestly have no idea what that even means since I was the one who brought it up...

This GM was very dismissive of the situation as if he gets these types of calls a lot and can bully the customer into just letting the issue go.  I can assure you that I will not be letting it go and am taking quite a few steps which is quite the opposite:

a) We will be going to litigation over this.  Even though it will cost me upwards to $5000 vs the $800 I was sent to collections for, it is now the principle.

b) I have earmarked a full page slot in the Sunday paper for the Pensacola News Journal and will be running an ad about my experience from now until eternity.

c) I am in the works to reserve a billboard 1 block from their office to show my displeasure with my experience with them.

All in all this will be about $10,000 but will be worth EVERY PENNY!