Both of my wife’s parents died in 2022 and we’ve been spending most of our free time trying to unravel their financial dealings and getting their estate settled. It’s been one nightmare after another. However, when digging through the bills, we found one from ADT. They don’t have a security system. They have never had a security system. So what is it?
It’s a scam.
Keep in mind that I didn’t know any of this was going on until after the fact. Apparently, about 2 years ago, some ADT asshole came to the door and sold my mother-in-law a security camera for the back yard. Why? Because she said she wanted to watch the squirrels and the raccoons.
Yes, you heard that right. This was a supposedly monitored security camera but she was promised that she could watch squirrels and raccoons from her laptop if she paid for the camera. It was only $75 a month.
Then, they never activated the camera.
That’s right, for two years they have been charging $75 a month and the wiring for the camera is just hanging there. I looked at it myself. No little red light, no power, no connection, just billing for absolutely no service whatsoever.
By the time I got on the scene, I immediately called ADT and cancelled the service. They had never actually provided any service whatsoever. It was a scam. I was pissed, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Just take your stupid camera, stuff it where the sun don’t shine and never call again. They got copies of the death certificates and all of that, it was done, right?
Not so fast. According to ADT, they still got to charge for another month after the cancellation. Yeah, that’s not going to fly. I got back on the phone today with the new bill and told them where to shove it. We weren’t paying anything for services not rendered. The stupid camera still isn’t plugged in.
They decided to argue with me. If we don’t pay, it’ll go to collections. Oh no, I said, go ahead and sue us for $75. Please, take us to court. California has one of the most stringent senior financial fraud laws on the books. I’ve got pictures, I’ve got eyewitnesses that saw the entire exchange go down, how their representative guaranteed that she could watch squirrels and raccoons on a camera that, so far as anyone knows, isn’t even capable of that. Even if it was, the damn thing was never even hooked up and you’d think that as a monitoring company, they would have realized, after 2 years, that they had nothing to monitor. They weren’t getting a signal!
The idiot on the phone immediately put me on hold and in 5 minutes came back. “We’ll take care of it, have a nice day” and she hung up on me. They don’t want to sue because they know they’d lose immediately. It’s unfortunate that I can’t sue them, but all of the injured parties are dead and I can’t sue on behalf of the estate.
I’m just wondering how many other elderly people are out there with cameras that don’t work, getting charged for services they aren’t receiving, because ADT doesn’t care. I’m probably going to bring this up to our lawyer, but I’m sure there’s nothing that can be done. It’s just another old lady that got taken advantage of by a company that just doesn’t care. What else is new, right?