My Pro Alarm

Do not do business with a company called ProAlarm! Please learn from how stupid I was! They lied to me, they broke promises they made to me, they broke promises to the Better Business Bureau, and I don’t think they should get away with it. One Saturday, a young man came to my door. I thought when I answered that he might be a Mormon missionary. He introduced himself and said he represented ProAlarm. His sales pitch was two lucky families from each neighborhood would receive a free burglar alarm/monitoring system. In exchange for receiving this free system, all you had to do was allow ProAlarm to put their sign in front of your house as free advertising. I actually fell for this (even though I’d been raised to believe that you never get “something for nothing”) and agreed to let them install their alarm system. The first clue I should have had that something was not right was when the nice young salesman told me, “Please don’t tell your neighbors you’re getting this for free. They might be one of the families who would have to pay full price, and we don’t want them to know there are families that are getting it for nothing, so please don’t say anything about it.” I realize now that probably EVERY family would get a ProAlarm system for nothing, thinking they were one of the “two lucky families” to get it for free. It’s all part of the sales pitch. The salesman told me I had three days to cancel if I changed my mind, and he showed me where it said that, in print, on the contract. He said that if I did choose to cancel, ProAlarm would send a technician to my house to take the system out so “you won’t be stuck with a burglar alarm you don’t want”. Keep in mind that he promised me this; it’s very important! Within an hour, a technician named Darrell came to install the system. Just as Darrell was about to leave, he told me that I should check with the city to find out if I needed to obtain an alarm permit. (I had no idea there was such a thing as I had never had a burglar alarm before, and gee, how nice of Darrell to wait until AFTER he got the system installed before he brings this up, right?) He gave me his cell number and told me if I had any questions to call him. A couple hours after he left, I did think of a question, and I called Darrell’s cell and got voice mail. I left him a message with my question. He never called back. The next day, I finally did my homework and did some checking. (Told you I was stupid.) The company that performs monitoring services for ProAlarm is Monitronics. I found this very web site and saw all the complaints about how horrible Monitronics is, and then I checked the Better Business Bureau web site and saw they had literally HUNDREDS of complaints about Monitronics, which isn’t even a member of the BBB. All I could think was, “Dear God, what did I get myself into?” I tried to call the salesman and got voice mai, left a message with the urgent delivery option that I wanted to cancel. Tried to call ProAlarm at their 800 number. They had five voice mailboxes, three of which dumped into the same voice mailbox (five options and thee of them were the same mailbox. Interesting.) I left messages on all the voice mail options, with urgent delivery, that I wanted to cancel and for someone to please call me to confirm. It was Sunday so I didn’t expect to hear right away, but I thought they would call me Monday morning. All Monday morning I didn’t hear anything. I called several times and kept getting voice mail. I was panicking, wondering if their little game was to simply not answer the phone and that way you wouldn’t be able to cancel. So I decided to fax them my cancellation, in writing. I attempted to fax a letter requesting cancellation to the fax number on the contract. And guess what? The fax number on the contract was not a real fax number! It was another number that dumped into the same voice mailbox as their 800 number! Isn’t THAT interesting? I wonder why their fax number on the contract is not a real fax number? So I found their real fax number on the Better Business Bureau website and got the fax to go through. I also sent them a letter by certified mail, return receipt requested, demanding to cancel. I also used the “Contact Us” link on ProAlarm’s website to send them an email requesting cancellation, and I found two other email addresses from the BBB website for them and sent emails requesting cancellation. I had no response to the fax or the three emails. Finally at lunchtime, I was able to reach their Accounting Department and talked to someone named “Nate.” I demanded to cancel and Nate said he would get the process started and would call me back with a phone number so I could contact a technician to come remove the alarm. He actually did call back and gave me a cell phone number for a technician named (fill in). The weird thing was, this cell phone had an area code for somewhere in the Carolinas (I checked online to find out where it was, since the area code was obviously not an Arizona area code). How was someone in the Carolinas supposed to come to Arizona to remove a burglar alarm from my house? I attempted to call this cell phone several times and left messages, but the technician did not return my calls. Gee, I wonder why? So I called ProAlarm again, and got hold of someone named James. When I told him about the cell phone having an area code that was not in my area, he stammered and stuttered and said, “Uh, uh, I THINK that should be in your area.” (Like I wouldn’t know the area code for my own city.) At 5:00 that afternoon, I got a call from a different person who identified himself as “Nathan” (not the same guy as “Nate”) and he came across about as slick as a snake-oil salesman. First he tried to argue me into not canceling, and I told him about Monitronics and how I wanted nothing to do with Monitronics because that company had hundreds of complaints with the BBB. He told me that ALL monitoring services have hundreds of complaints with the BBB, and not to let that bother me, and I told him that if that is the case, I would rather take my chances with the burglars!! I told Nathan how angry I was that I had been calling all day and except for one brief return call from Nate in Accounting, giving me a cell number for a tech who was on the other side of the country from me, nobody had given me the courtesy of a return phone call. Very soothingly, Nathan pointed out that HE had called me back. (Keep in mind he said that; it’s important too.) He promised me the contract would be cancelled and a technician would come to my home to remove the system, and set up an appointment for Darrell to come back the next day at 5:00 to remove the system. Five minutes later, Nathan called me back. He said, “Did you know there are actually two companies with the name Monitronics? The one that ProAlarm uses is not the same one as the one with all those complaints.” I totally blew up, because I had checked on the Internet, and could find only ONE company called Monitronics, and it had the same address and phone number as the Monitronics on the paperwork that salesman (blank) had given me, so it was indeed the same Monitronics. Nathan had just told me a barefaced, out and out LIE. I told him that this was NOT true and that it WAS the same Monitronics and there is only one company with that name, so don’t give me this garbage. Realizing his little lie wasn’t going to work, snake-oil Nathan ended the call after again promising that Darrell would come to my house to take the alarm system out. Next morning at 6:30, I went outside and discovered the ProAlarm sign was gone. Boy, it sure didn’t take them long to get that sign out from in front of my house, did it? Within about 12 hours of my cancelling with them, the sign vanished. They were sure in a hurry to get their sign back! At 5:00 that afternoon, Darrell did not show up. I waited till 5:15, called Darrell’s cell, got voice mail, left a message. No return phone call. 5:30, no Darrell. Called him again, again got voice mail, again left a message, and again no call back. Called Nathan’s cell, and when he answered, I told him Darrell was half an hour late. “He’s just stuck on an installation, he’ll be there,” was Nathan’s response. 5:45, no Darrell. Called him again, left another message (because Darrell never, ever answers his cell) and then called Nathan, got HIS voice mail, left a message that Darrell was now 45 minutes late and I was getting upset. No call back from Nathan either. At 6:00, a full hour past the time that Darrell was supposed to be there, I called him again, again got voice mail, again left a message, and then called Nathan and got HIS voice mail and angrily left a message wanting to know if he was suddenly avoiding my calls, and that Darrell was now an hour late. Two minutes later, a snotty-sounding Nathan calls me back and says, “I was in a meeting, I was not trying to avoid your calls.” I told him Darrell had not shown up, and I got the same song and dance that “he’s doing an installation, but I just text-messaged him and told him he needs to get over to your place.” (That’s a word-for-word quote.) I asked, “So he will still be here tonight?” and Nathan said, “Yes, tonight.” Rest of the evening went by, no Darrell. Next morning, called Nathan’s cell, got voice mail, told him, “Your technician did not show up last night. You need to call me and set up a new appointment.” I also tried to call Darrell, who again did not answer his cell, and left a message for him as well. You guessed it, no call back from either of them. I tried Darrell’s cell a couple more times, and I tried Nathan again at lunchtime and got his voice mail again, left the same message again, and again no call back. I tried one more time that afternoon, still got Nathan’s voice mail, and left him the same message. The next morning, called Nathan’s cell again, again got voice mail. (What happened to the soothing “Now, I called you back,” that I had gotten before?) I said, and I admit I was sarcastic, “I’m going to assume you were in a MEETING yesterday and that’s why you didn’t return my calls. Darrell has never yet showed up. Call me to set up a new time because I don’t want this system in my house!” Nathan didn’t call me back. Isn’t it funny that after he got mad at me for accusing him of avoiding my calls, he suddenly seemed to be doing just that? He never did return any of my phone calls after Tuesday. He just stopped calling me back. I couldn’t get anyone from ProAlarm to call me back either. And Darrell NEVER calls anyone back. I even tried salesman (blank) again, and HE didn’t answer HIS cell or call me back. Hmmm, interesting. 10 days later, they charged my credit card!!! I actually managed to get hold of someone named Reina at ProAlarm, and she promised me she’d remove the charge from my card and that a technician would come to my house to take out the alarm system. Later, another person named Courtney called me at work and left a message with one of my co-workers who took her call saying that the charge had been removed from my card, and Courtney also promised that a tech would come to my house to remove the alarm. I called my credit card and put a dispute on the charge, just to be safe, and then filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I was obviously being given the runaround as far as having the system removed, and I wanted them to make good on their promise to send someone, ANYONE, to remove it. I was not using it, had it turned off, had cancelled the contract, and I had promises from all these people that a technician would come remove it, and they hadn’t followed through on that yet. The BBB forwarded me a response they received to my complaint from (blank) saying that the contract was cancelled, they were “trying to get technician Darrell out to the customer’s house, and will continue to try to do so until the problem is resolved.” (That’s an exact quote of what (blank) told the BBB.) Yet nobody showed up. I called Reina three times over the next week, and each time she promised they would have someone come out to remove the system. The third time I called her, she said she “just didn’t understand what is going on, I put pressure on the right people. I will call them again as soon as I hang up with you and put pressure on them again.” But again, nobody showed up. So I had promises from salesman, Nate, Nathan, Reina, Courtney and (blank), six different people from ProAlarm, promises made to me AND made to the BBB, that the system would be removed from my house, and these promises were NOT KEPT. They were LIES. To my relief, the charge WAS removed from my credit card, but I told my credit card company that they ever tried to put a charge on my card again, it was to be red-flagged because I was NOT authorizing any charges from them. After a month, the BBB closed my complaint, without my permission, saying that it had determined that even if I disagreed, they felt the company had made a “good faith effort to resolve the problem” and that the company “had not responded to the last few contacts from the BBB.” Interesting. So now ProAlarm was just totally ignoring me, and also was now totally ignoring the BBB, in essence thumbing their nose at both myself and the BBB. And how is it “good faith” if they had been promising to remove the alarm from my house and had never done so? Broken promises and lies are “good faith?” So now you can see ProAlarm’s game. This wholesome young salesman, as part of his sales pitch, promises that if you cancel within three days, they will take the system out of your house at no charge so you aren’t stuck with something you don’t want. ProAlarm is gambling that most people will not cancel, and as a result won’t find out that ProAlarm has NO INTENTION of removing the alarm. They figure nobody will call their bluff. If you DO cancel the contract and call their bluff, they put plan B into action. A lackey like Nathan will call you and try to argue you into keeping the alarm, and if you insist on canceling, he will tell you lies in an effort to keep you from canceling, such as the lie he told me about there being “two” Monitronics. If that doesn’t work, he will then stall for time by giving you all these promises about how the technician will come, don’t worry, he’ll be there, etc. After that first day, you won’t hear from their lackey again. He’s done his job, served his purpose, bought some time for the company, and you will never be able to reach him again because he just ignores you from then on. You will never be able to reach the salesman again after he leaves your home. You will never be able to reach the technician again after he eaves your home. You will get empty promises from the people in the office, IF you can successfully reach a living, breathing person and not voice mail. If you file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, ProAlarm will make the same empty promises to the BBB, but nothing will ever actually be done as far as keeping those promises. They stall for time and drag their feet until the BBB closes the complaint, and then they figure they’re off the hook, and you’re stuck with an alarm system you don’t want. You’ll never hear from them again, and they will never keep their promise to get the system out of your house. They’re either liars or totally incompetent. They manage to get someone to my house to install the system within an HOUR of signing the contract, but they don’t get someone to my house to remove the system after a MONTH of promising they would. They can remove their stupid sign from in front of my house within TWELVE HOURS of my cancelling, but a MONTH of trying to get them to keep their promise to take the system out as well results in NOTHING. Bottom line – if some young guy from ProAlarm comes to your door and offers to give you a free alarm system in exchange for putting their sign in your yard, SLAM THE DOOR IN HIS FACE AND RUN OUT YOUR BACK DOOR AS FAST AS YOU CAN. These people are liars from the word go! They have lying down to an art form!!!

Identity theft, meeting Jack Kelly, Little Debbies, and being clueless

Can someone steal your identity if all they know about you is your first name and where you lived years ago?  I used to know a girl who thinks so.  For the sake of protecting her identity (!), we will call her "Lisa."  She lived in Garden Grove, California. 

In the summer of 1980, Lisa and another girl, Rachel (also not her real name) and I were fans of the actor Jack Kelly, who played James Garner's brother Bart on "Maverick." Jack Kelly was on the Huntington Beach City Council at that time, and Lisa and Rachel and I went to a council meeting and were able to talk to Jack and get his autograph

Flash forward to the year 2002.  There was a website devoted to the TV show "Maverick," and the lady who ran the website, upon learning that I had met Jack once upon a time, asked me to write up a narrative about having met him.  So I wrote my story, including that I had gone to Garden Grove, California and stayed with Lisa at her home.

When Lisa read the story on this website, she proceeded to, quite frankly, have a cow.  She emailed me and flat out just short of ordered me to have the website owner delete all references to "Garden Grove" from the story.  "I'm worried someone will read this and steal my identity," she explained.  "If you just put 'Lisa in Orange County,' that's fine, but 'Lisa in Garden Grove' narrows it down too much.'"

To say I was dumbfounded is putting it mildly.  This girl really seriously believed that someone could steal her identity just based on knowing that someone named "Lisa" had lived in "Garden Grove, California" way back when Jimmy Carter was still president??  I hadn't given a last name - I hadn't given if she still lived there or not - I hadn't given if she had ever gotten married - had moved away - anything except her first name and the city she lived in during 1980.

What Lisa was asking me to believe was that an identity thief  "out in cyberspace" would have NO WAY of knowing that ANYONE with a very common first name like "Lisa" had EVER lived in Garden Grove, California, UNLESS that thief read those two pieces of information in that story I wrote about meeting Jack Kelly for the "Maverick" website.

He would have NO WAY of knowing that someone with a very common first name like "Lisa" had EVER lived in Garden Grove, California, UNTIL he read those two pieces of information on the "Maverick" web site.  UNLESS and UNTIL he read those two skimpy pieces of information on that website, he wouldn't know.

But then AFTER Mr. Identity Thief reads those two skimpy pieces of information on that website, not only would he know now for the FIRST TIME that somebody with a common first name like "Lisa" lived in Garden Grove, California in 1980, he would ALSO somehow, someway, be able to know WHICH of ALL the women and girls named "Lisa" who have EVER lived in Garden Grove that I was talking about, and just based on those TWO pieces of information, he'd somehow be able to get her Social Security number, or her checking account number, or other pertinent information he'd need to be ABLE to steal her identity.  In order to get the identity of the Lisa I was talking about, he'd have to wade through ALL the women and girls named Lisa who EVER lived in Garden Grove.  So does that mean I endangered the identity of ANYONE named Lisa who EVER lived in Garden Grove, just by writing a story involving ONE such person with that name?????

And Lisa was asking me to believe that Mr. Identity Thief wouldn't be able to figure out that anyone with her first name had ever lived in her town ANYWAY.  That an identity thief wouldn't be able to simply pick a common first name, arbitrarily match it up with a city or town anywhere in America, and score a hit. 

And if someone can steal your identity if all they know about you is your first name and the name of any city you've ever lived in, no matter how long ago, how's come identity theft isn't even MORE prevalant than it already is?  EVERYBODY has a first name, and EVERYBODY has lived SOMEWHERE.  If all an identity thief needs is your first name and the name of any city you've ever lived in, nobody would EVER be safe from identity theft!

Lisa also ignores the fact that radio talk show hosts (such as Rush Limbaugh, whom she and I both love), regularly identify callers by first name and CURRENT city of residence without ever worrying about giving away their identities in the process.  "Phil from West Palm Beach, you're next on the EIB network."  "Thank you, Rush, mega dittoes."  This is available not only to hear when you listen to Rush on the air, but in the transcripts of his shows on his website.  Lisa would probably respond, "Oh, I would never let Rush identify me by city of residence if I called in to his show."  But what about all the other people who DO?  Is Rush endangering all THEIR identities by saying, "Our next caller is Phil from Portland - Phil, you're on the EIB Network."  "Mega dittoes, Rush.  I'm calling about..." 

Lisa can be pretty clueless anyway.  When she and I were first corresponding in the early 80's, we got to discussing one of our favorite foods, donuts.  She talked about Winchell's Donuts, and I mentioned Dunkin Donuts.  Her response was, "Oh, I don't think we have that chain here."  Well, when I visited her in Garden Grove, we went to Disneyland.  Lisa was working at Disneyland that summer.  And guess what?  There was a Dunkin Donuts RIGHT ON THE WAY TO DISNEYLAND.  Which meant she drove by it TWICE A DAY, on her way TO and FROM work!  And somehow, she NEVER NOTICED IT.  Not even AFTER we had discussed Dunkin Donuts, which you would think would have made her more APT to notice it.  As in, "Oh, look, there's a Dunkin Donuts right there, that's what she was telling me about in her letter!  I'll have to write back to her and tell her we have them here after all!"  Nope, she didn't notice it until I POINTED IT OUT to her.  Then as we drove around Orange County and went to Los Angeles and so on, I noticed Dunkin Donuts all OVER the place.  "Lisa, look - what's that?  Oh look, what's over on THAT corner?  Oh, look, there's ANOTHER one.  I thought you said that chain wasn't here in California??"  Her response was to just giggle like it was silly she hadn't noticed before.

Well, now she's doing it again, all these years later.  She writes a blog, a very well done blog (much better than my pathetic attempt at blog-writing seen here in The Rambler), and when Hostess recently went bankrupt, someone asked her about Little Debbie snacks.  Her response was that her family had never tried Little Debbie and she didn't think they were even available in California.

Head pounding on desk, I went immediately to www.LittleDebbie.com and typed in zip code after zip code in the "Find a Store" section of their website.  Lo and behold, there are NUMEROUS stores all OVER Orange County that sell Little Debbies!  Apparently Lisa (who my mom used to say "walks around in a happy fog,") has probably strolled by Little Debbie displays in the snack food aisles of various stores in Orange County and never seen them.  I wanted so badly to get on a plane, fly to John Wayne Airport, go to her house, drag her to whatever supermarket she frequents most often, take her to the snack food aisle, grab BOXES and BOXES of Little Debbies, wave them under her nose, and say, "Lisa, what are these?  Do you see the little girl on the box?  Do you see the name 'Little Debbie' on the box?  How could you NEVER EVER have NOTICED these before?  Yes, Little Debbies are sold in California!!!!  Wake UP!!!"

To think she is 50 years old and has never known the bliss of biting into a Little Debbie Swiss Roll....sigh...

Oh, by the way, back to identity theft for a second - Lisa never puts familiy photographs in her blog.  She put a picture once of her younger son, but he was standing in the rain with a huge umbrella, and all you could see were his feet.  She put a picture of her husband and two of their children and the family dog walking on the beach, but it was taken from such a distance that they were stick figures.  So her fear of identity theft must extend to putting family pictures on her blog, too.  BUT - BUT - BUT - her older daughter (let's call her "Katie") went to London a couple years ago and kept a blog of her activities there, and put HER picture AND pictures of Lisa and her husband "Dave," who had flown to London to visit her, on HER blog.  Why didn't Lisa order her daughter to take those pictures down?  Or did her daughter tell her, "Mom, go pound sand.  I'm leaving the pictures, including the ones of you and Dad, on my blog, and that's that."

Dave, Katie, and two of Lisa's other children ("Jason" and "Samantha,") have Facebook pages with their PHOTOS, LAST NAMES, and CITY OF RESIDENCE all given on their Facebook pages.  Lisa's mom "Donna" and her brother "Mike" also have Facebook pages with all that information on there.  Why isn't Lisa raising the roof and insisting that her family, at the very least her husband and children, not be on Facebook because they are giving away FAR MORE information than I did in my story about our meeting Jack Kelly?  Why isn't she bossing them around the way she bossed me around?

The kicker, too, is this - back in 2002 Lisa demanded that I get in touch with the lady who ran the "Maverick" web page and have her edit the story I had submitted about our meeting Jack Kelly and remove all references to Garden Grove.  Which I did, and the lady told me she had done so.  But later I went back and looked, and that lady had MISSED some of the references to Garden Grove, which were STILL IN THERE and had NOT been removed.  Lisa, for all her panic about her identity being stolen, had not bothered to go double check, triple check and quadruple check to make SURE those references to Garden Grove were removed, but just sanguinely took my word for it that the lady had removed them.  So I never TOLD Lisa those references were still there, and that website stayed up for two years before it disappeared, apparently having been taken down by the lady who ran it, and in that entire two years, Lisa didn't know her name linked with "Garden Grove" was still on that website!!! 

The flu epidemic and calling in sick to work

With the current flu epidemic, we are being told that if you are sick, you should stay home from work so as not to infect other people.  What is not being talked about is what do you do if your employer is someone who discourages use of sick time?

Some years ago, I worked for an insurance company, and I will name them as they are no longer in business - Prudential Property & Casualty.  Their sick policy was stringent, draconian, asinine.  You got 10 sick days per year, in addition to your regular vacation days (it wasn't like today, where most companies just give you one overall bank of earned time off to use for any reason, be it sickness or vacation time).  But you were allotted just two sick "occurrences" per 12 months, and the 12 months wasn't necessarily a calendar year.

Say you got sick in March, and called in, and were out just one day.  You come back to work, and everything is fine.  You catch a bad cold in November, call in sick, go back to work, and everything is fine.  But then say you catch cold again in January.  You figure no problem, it's a new year, I have a new bank of sick days, and I only used two sick days all of last year.  Wrong!  You now have a third "occurrence" within 12 months (you didn't get a clean slate just because it's January and a new year), and the Human Resources guidelines called for you to be "counseled" by your supervisor, meaning the supervisor reprimands you for having had too many "occurrences" within a 12-month period of time, and a warning is given to you.  Now the next time you call in sick would be your fourth occurrence, and if you keep having "occurrences," even if they're spaced way apart and are only a day each time, you can get written up for it, and perhaps even terminated.  It was almost impossible to get a clean slate, because who can go 12 months without getting sick?  And if you do get sick, you're put in the impossible position of trying to decide if you're sick enough to get an "occurrence," how many "occurrences" have I already had, what if I get sick again six months from now and am forced to use another "occurrence," etc.

As far as I was concerned, if you got a new bank of 10 sick days when the calendar year changed, then all your "occurrences" from the previous year should have been relegated to the past as well, and you should have a clean slate.  And if you missed only two days total for sickness the previous year, that to me is excellent attendance, not poor attendance.  (What was also bad was suppose you called in sick on a Tuesday, felt better Wednesday and went back to work, then realized you'd gone back to work too soon and felt awful and called in sick on Thursday.  Whammo, you've used two "occurrences" in one WEEK because you had that day back at work in between, so now you're sunk for the next 12 months!) 

My supervisor, Margaret (I wonder what ever happened to her, where she is today, if she's even still alive - she'd be in her 80s now, I think) told me, "It's not that we don't believe you're sick, it's that we need warm bodies at the desks doing the work."  That's an exact quote.

That was a horrible place to work anyway.  I remember one of my job duties was distributing the mail to the claims examiners each day.  I was also training a new lady named Alice.  One time I was walking around with the mail folders in my arms, distributing the mail as per my duties, and Alice stopped me as I walked by so she could ask me a quick question.  I stopped for all of 30 seconds to answer her question.  Later, Margaret reprimanded me, telling me I was supposed to be getting the mail out to the employees and not chit-chatting with co-workers.  I looked at Margaret and said, "I am also supposed to be training Alice, and she had a question for me, and I stopped for all of half a minute to answer her question; I'm sure taking 30 whole seconds to answer a question from a trainee did not impede the mail getting distributed!"  (I took that tone because by that time, I knew I'd had enough and was so fed up I was going to quit my job soon anyway.)