We have an ADT burglar alarm on our house in west London, but recently discovered it wasn’t working and have no idea how long it has been out. It’s a rental property and is between tenancies, so we rely on the alarm for security. Despite a number of phone calls and emails to ADT, the only explanation has come from a call handler who reluctantly told us it was due to an O2 mast failure in the area. Customers don’t necessarily know this, and we imagine that hundreds of homes and commercial premises within range of the mast could be unprotected and have their insurance invalidated.
We are having a frustrating time with this, with no idea when the problem is going to be fixed. We have still had no acknowledgement from ADT regarding the cause of failure, despite persisting with calls and emails. A L-G, West Drayton, London
If you informed your insurer that you have a burglar alarm that is not activated when the house is unoccupied – either because of a system fault like this or because you choose not to switch it on – it may well reduce what it would offer or even refuse to pay out if a burglary took place.
We got in touch with ADT, which said: “We’ve investigated A L-G’s complaint and have concluded that the issue causing her alarm to not set was in fact not due to a mast being down, but rather one of the door contacts not being set properly. We appreciate she was given this incorrect information when she first contacted us, and we are now retraining the member of staff concerned. We arranged for a technical call to check on the system and resolve this issue, and can confirm that A L-G now has a full working system.”
ADT has offered you a three-month payment break due to the outage, which apparently you have accepted.
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