I read a piece from you dating back to 2014 regarding regular ADT daily call costs arising from testing a domestic alarm system. I believe my problem might be bigger. In one month (mid-January to mid-February) it called/tested the alarm a staggering 958 times (at a cost of £97), which was clearly an error as I don’t even have a contract with them. I only knew this was ADT when I investigated the unexplained charges on my telephone bill.
My landlady, who lived in the property some years ago, had an ADT alarm account but not since 2011. After I chased this up, ADT emailed me confirming I have no contract with it but insisting that the matter was now closed and I had no right to reimbursement from my telephone provider. AH, London
When ADT got in touch with you it confirmed that the maintenance contract was terminated in February 2011. It said that at the time of termination the previous occupants would have been advised to have the alarm system disconnected from the telephone to prevent the alarm attempting to send signals to the receiving centre.
However, this had not been done and the system was not disconnected from the telephone line. As it was categorised as “customer owned”, ADT said that this would be the responsibility of the owner and refused to reimburse you, even though it apologised for the inconvenience.
After our intervention ADT had a change of heart. It said: “We have fully investigated the issue regarding the charges incurred on AH’s phone bill by the ADT alarm. The alarm contract was terminated by the previous owners in 2011 and at the time they would have been advised that it was their responsibility to disconnect the alarm from the phone line so as not to incur further charges. Unfortunately, they did not do this and it seems that they also did not make AH aware of the situation when he moved into the property.”
It went on: “This type of situation doesn’t happen often, but it’s one ADT is keen to rectify as AH was clearly unaware of the issue with the alarm.
“We have recently updated our communications to make it clearer to owners that they must disconnect the alarm once their contract is terminated to avoid further charges, and we also offer to send an engineer out to do this. As a goodwill gesture we are offering to reimburse AH for the full amount and will contact him to arrange this.”
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