Bone In The Throat

For 10 years I’ve had ADT security.

It’s been an okay system and provides a slight… Well, negligible discount on the homeowner’s insurance.

However of late, there’ve been some incidents that are completely unacceptable.

Their application is horrendously slow to connect with the control panel. So while they say you can control the Alarm from your phone, and you can… It’s crazy slow and sometimes just won’t connect. So while I used to rely on the application to turn the alarm on and off from the car, I can’t anymore.

Well, I can… if I’m willing to wait for the system to connect and all that. There have been times when I’ve waited in the driveway 5 minutes or more and finally got frustrated, got out of the car, and disarmed the alarm manually from the main console. Then gone back out to the car to open the dang garage.

This didn’t used to be the case but it’s gotten much worse over the past 2 years.

Then there’s the Alarm panel bitching and complaining that it’s lost connection with the monitoring station, (Always at 2 AM) If this happens the damn alarm will go off every 10 minutes and most recently the “Support” people were completely unable to resolve the issue or tell me how to turn the damn thing off so I could get some sleep.

Then mysteriously, everything started working again. Huh… You’d think there’d be a way for me to tell the system all is well and I’ll deal with your issues tomorrow.

Since the application doesn’t work reliably, you’re forced to use the keyfob remote. Don’t even get me started about changing the batteries. On more than one occasion, changing the battery has resulted in the keyfob ceasing to function. In those situations ADT wants to charge you for a new fob, and you have to have a service call to program the new one.

The fob has four buttons. Clockwise from the left, the buttons are Arm Stay, Arm Away, Disarm, and the “Golden” button is Panic alarm. 

This layout is, I suppose logical, except that if you’re trying to get the keyfob out of your backpack and/or in a hurry, it’s far too easy to press that damn panic alert button. Sometimes if the keyfob is in your pocket a key will press the panic alert button. 

Either way, no matter how quickly you call the ADT people you’ve got a crazy situation and not once in recent years have they been able to call the police to cancel the panic.

Last night was a prime example. I’m in the car, the keys are in my backpack, I’ve just sat for an hour on a closed freeway due to an accident and in my haste to get home to take a leak, I opened the garage door without disarming the alarm first. Realizing my mistake I’m on the phone to ADT within a minute and I mean literally within 60 seconds.

Call one, ADT answers… Hangs up, Call two ADT answers hangs up… Call three ADT answers shitty connection, I’m telling the lady to cancel the police. She collects the requisite security information and puts me on hold. After a couple of minutes she says that she can’t cancel the police. I ask her why. She says that the police are called immediately and that too much time has passed.

I say what? Not 10 minutes have passed and the police have radio.

Then she lies to me!

She says that ADT called me and got no answer. I say they didn’t, and I’m talking to her on the only phone I have. Then I pull up the phone log to check. Sure enough, only my outbound calls to ADT are listed in the phone log, there are no incoming phone calls from ADT. 

Uhh WRONG Answer!

My next question is what does it take to terminate ADT.

She tells me that can’t be done until Monday.

So Monday I’m calling to cancel the service.

There are other similar services that are cheaper and better rated. Simple equation! 

So I’m waiting for the police to show up.

At 11:45 PM I get a call, first one, from ADT. It’s a different lady who’s following up. Okay, I tell her the situation and that I’m not pleased. I also ask her if the police are actually coming or if they’ve been told they don’t need to come. She’s surprised that the police haven’t shown up yet.

She checks and says apparently the police were cancelled. Okay great! I thank her for following up and wish her a good evening.

At 12:15 AM Aliens landed in front of my house.

A police cruiser is sitting outside with the spotlights on the front of my place. I’m still up anyway so I’ve got lights on in the house and I’m listening to music to relax before I try to go to bed.

I walk out on the front deck and realize the officer may not have a clear view of me, The cruiser lights are only illuminating the lower portion of the house. I tell the officer, “Wait a minute, let me turn on some lights so you can see me” I step back inside and flip on the exterior lights then go meet the officer in the driveway.

I apologize for the unnecessary trip and explain to him that ADT had been told to cancel the call. I pull out my wallet and give him my ID. 

He was very nice about it. I told him the police are welcome at anytime to park in my driveway, they needn’t park on the street. I shake his hand and he hands me back my ID. I felt really bad about the un-necessary drive he had to make. He had other more pressing matters, I’m sure.

He was very nice and professional, but did say that ADT rarely calls them to cancel anything. I find that interesting, I’d have invited him for coffee but since he was on duty I doubt he’d have taken me up on it.

I’d no sooner finished with the officer, than my phone displayed an email from ADT saying that there’d been an alarm. The email timestamp on their email is 11:39, it arrived at 12:16… Say What????

Still no sign of the original phone calls from ADT. Clearly they had the right number, otherwise the second lady couldn’t have called me.

So ADT is being fired for the following;

• Misinformation
• Not doing their jobs in a reasonable way
• Flat out lying

In point of fact, ADT should have replaced the alarm control system as part of routine maintenance. The unit is 10 years old. They’ve never come back to do any kind of tune up, unless I badgered them into it. They’ve been difficult to deal with over the years and I find myself asking why am I paying them to be incompetent?

So I won’t.

It’s nice seeing what’s happening in those places I remember fondly. Sometimes though I realize that those places have changed just as much as the rest of the country.  

This morning while reading a Kentucky paper, an article jumped off the page.

The article details how a simple clerical error being amplified by technology caused legal entanglements for an innocent and completely unrelated family 90 miles away.

The article is Here

This is a current example of what I mentioned in the blog post Here

What makes this example stand out are the circumstances that led to it.

Overworked employee, lack of employee retention, outdated computer systems, and the ease with which the myriad of laws and technology’s reach can ensnare anybody at anytime.

Given the speed with which technology can propagate an error. Add the tendency for people to believe what is displayed on their computer screens without question, regardless of data to the contrary and you have a digital mess that the affected individual must correct.

The individual will have to champion their cause alone, usually because they’re fighting the “Not my job syndrome”. 

In many cases even if you manage to find an official that will acknowledge the error, they have no means to correct it.

In my previous job, I saw these kinds of errors all the time. Thankfully I had the ability to correct most of them without having to send it up to higher authority. I was one of the few who could, or cared enough to take the time. Honestly, I knew when I sent something to the higher-ups, whatever it was would fall through the cracks and never be addressed.

It’s good that Fayette county is paying for the legal fees and providing credit monitoring. But I’ll bet that 3, 5, or 10 years down the road the family will once again be fighting to clear their name. 

This is the digital trap we’re creating. I believe that it will only get worse and will eventually choke us.