question about burglar alarm dispute (San Francisco Bay Area)

Hi dear all:

We recently got involved with a dispute with a burglar alarm company (in San Francisco Bay Area), and I hope this is the right place to post this question.

On our AT&T phone bill last month we noticed that we have a long list of "automated" long distance phone calls dialing to a area code (408) phone number. These phone calls happened on daily basis and always start from 1:43pm and would continue to dial until 2:39pm (for about one hour, and call every one minute). At first we didn't think of it's a problem from our burglar alarm company, so we called AT&T and they put these calls on dispute for us. The next month, we noticed the same thing again, so we called AT&T again and they told us that it seems the phone number is a fax/computer type of phone number, they also asked whether we have some kind of alarm system, so we started to talk to our alarm company. The alarm company did some investigation, then got back to us saying that these phone calls were made by the alarm system for automated testing, as all these calls were never actually went through, so the modem kept on trying to make those automated testing calls. However, they did mention that they have another 4-5 customers who also had this problem before and the problem seems to be related to really old modem (on the residence side, not the modems on their company side), so they suggested that we should upgrade the modem in our house (the current one was provided and installed by them), and they also switched the 408 long distance number to a 1-800 number. They continue to say that we should dispute these phone calls with AT&T and they are NOT willing to pay for these phone bills (currently there are about $390 due to

Some questions:

  1. From the technical side, who should be really responsible for these phone calls? I know that we shouldn't, but we also don't know from the technical side whether AT&T or the alarm company should be responsible for this 0. Could someone please give us some "technical details" about how this type of automated dialing system works (for burglar alarm systems)? If, according to the alarm company, that these automated dialing (from our home modem) never went through, why would AT&T has a record on their computer and still charge us?

  1. Is there any regulate agency for burglar alarm companies? If this is the alarm company's fault and they should be responsible for the 0 bill, other than the BBB (better business bureau), is there any other places that we could file a complain against this alarm company?

Reply to
hotister
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Reply to
I brive a dus

I'm neither an alarm "expert" nor do I know anything about alarm business requirements in your area, but one thing I can say with a fair certainty is that if the call showed up on your bill, it did connect to SOMETHING or SOMEONE, be it another modem, a fax, or someone's voice line. If that wasn't your alarm company, there's probably someone out there who's pretty f'n annoyed at having their phone ring every minute for an hour and find nobody there when they answer. Have you tried making a regular call yourself to that number to at least explain and/or apologize (not that it's your place to do so, but it would be a "nice" thing to do)?

Now that said... at a rough guess I'd say the alarm company may have changed their contact number and missed switching over a few panels, since others seem to have had the same problem. I don't see what the age of the modem would have to do with anything; the only possible issue I could see is if the system is dialing a 7-digit number when the monitoring station has changed area codes, but from the sound of it, it IS dialing a different area code than you're in, and still, the number should be controlled by the panel, not the modem.

If it IS dialing the proper number, it's possible there's something wrong with the modem and it's just not able to connect. Whether that's your responsibility or the alarm company's would depend on the service contract. Frankly though, the fact that they've now switched it to use a 1-800 number is, to my mind, a point in your favor, because that would be something they should have done long before in expectation of exactly this sort of problem.

Anyway, just my fairly generic two cents... I'm sure someone more familiar with your local laws and regulations will have something more useful for you.

Reply to
Matt Ion

Do you have a dish for TV service that uses a phone line? Do you have any other telephone dialers (a.k.a FAX machines)? A daily test timer for an alarm panel at 1:43 PM is not typical. Since a properly wired alarm would disconnect all other phones, scheduling it for daytime calling would be problematic for most customers. Is the time set correctly in the alarm system? Daily test timers mean daily. You are never home during the day (even on weekends)? You don't notice your phone "off hook" or out of service for an hour or so every day? Do you live where there is common access to a phone pedestal or other IDF or IW (inside wire) panel? Did someone with only cell service 'dog tick' off your phone service for their dish or other data signals? If the alarm panel is the problem, here is what what might be happening. The alarm panel dials the alarm central station receiver and the receiver picks up (answers). At that point the call is complete for AT&T billing purposes. Then the panel attempts to send the data and fails to get a 'kiss off' from the reveiver; the communicator could be going deaf and not hear the ack (acknowledgement) tone; the phone lines are dirty and the siganl is scrambled; the receiver answers, but gives hold tones to the panel in the queue for too long. The panel then repeats the calling process. Perhaps at some point the signal finally reaches the receiver or there should be an FTC (Fail To Communicate) signal on the panel or there should be a LTT (Late To Test) signal from the alarm company. It would be unusual for the panel to dial for that long a period (almost an hour) unless it was set for unlimited dialing attempts (not typical). There are too many unanswered questions to know for certain what is going on exactly. If the alarm is now dialing an 800 number it should not be generating any tolls (unless the back up phone number is not an 800 number too). The alarm compnay made this 800 number change remotely? They never checked the alarm system event buffer? Never set the correct time? Never checked the test timer schedule? As for paying the bill that would depend on what the alarm company reported and recommended, and when the alarm company did it; and what you may have chosen to ignore or omit from your post here.

wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@h11g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

Reply to
Roland Moore

How do you connect to the internet? Broadband or dial up line? Could be your PC infected with a "dialer" virus? In the UK these things dial premium rate phone lines set up by the person who wrote the dialer.

Reply to
CWatters

Actually where I have run across this type of problem is when the customer has added DSL service to their home or business phone line without bothering to notify the alarm company. What usually happens is either the CS receiver can't hear the signals over the DSL carrier OR more often the panel can't hear the kissof signal from the CS so it sends the signal again.

Since all of my panels dial my toll free lines I just eat the toll cost when it happens, and charge the customer for a DSL filter specific to alarm panels.

NOW! Technically it is the customer's fault, or the DSL providers fault in this case. I recently did a DSL self install in my house, and the instruction clearly said that if you have an alarm panel notify your alarm company. I have also had clients call me and tell me their self install instructions for their new DSL modem said the same thing. If these instruction are well enough known to be documented for self installers there is absolutely no excuse for a proffessional DSL installer to make this mistake either.

In this case we can't say who is at fault until we actually discover the problem for this run-a-way repeat signal attempt, but addition of DSL to the line can cause almost exactly these symptoms.

Of course we have over looked an underlying problem which could be makling things worse. AT&T. If they have the customer on a carrier where they are compressing to many phone lines over the available bandwidth they could be distorting the signal enroute. Usually the kissof signal is the one that suffers. Most of the time you can hear a little echo or tin can sound to the lines on a voice call when this is the case, but not always. The fact that the customer's panel is dialing the local ANI terminated line rather than the alarm companies toll free line says that whatever the customer's toll provider does is what the alarm panel has to deal with. Another reason to own your own lines, and pick your own carrier that caters to alarm companies, and have your own toll free lines. Then rarely is the alarm panel subject to the substandard service of the customer's toll provider. Yes it costs you a few ¢ per signal, but the level of service is better. Why this is the case for this customer is unknown. Maybe they have been on the same service for 50 years and have never had anything upgraded ever, and now its coming back to bite them.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

What are payphones?

Reply to
Mark Leuck

Sounds like you have a Moose panel

Reply to
Mark Leuck

1) The alarm system seems to be programmed to send a test signal daily. This should involve one call. If the test signal is not being received properly by the alarm company, then a real alarm will probably also not be received properly. 2) As you state, if the call is on your bill, it was answered by the alarm company's receiving equipment. What they probably meant by 'it didn't go through' was that the alarm company's computer did not process the test properly. Since a proper test was not processed by the alarm company's computer, it would show up, DAILY, as an "exception report", requiring action on their part. Since this series of events has generated $390. in fees, it must have been going on for a while. If this were my account, and I screwed up by not following up on a "test signal not received" for (several weeks?), I would bite the bullet and send you a letter of apology, ask for copies of the bills, and send you a check, or account credit (I prefer a check as an audit trail). I had something similar happen in the early eighties, with a runaway dialer. We had telco chase it down, as we did not know where it was coming from (no data was being sent). We responded that night, and reimbursed the customer.

Regarding who is responsible to repair (not upgrade) your system, you need to refer to your agreement. I have dialers that were installed in the late seventies that are still in service working. You should not need to upgrade your control (most alarm systems create their "modems" in software) because the alarm company changed its receiver or computer.

John Sowden American Sentry Systems, Inc.

Reply to
John R. Sowden

Hmm, good point, hadn't thought of that... but as I say, I'm not an alarm expert... thus my disclaimers :)

Yeah, that's the problem with diagnosing something like this online - ultimately, someone with a clue really should take a look at the system IN PERSON and determine the actual cause of the problem, before any "blame" can be assigned.

In the end, it may be equitable for all three parties to simple split the cost: the alarm company because, as you say, they should recognize this type of problem right off rather than trying to pass it off on the customer and/or telco (and because as has been noted elsewhere, because their system should have registered a problem from missing check-ins long ago); the telco, because their installer should know enough to check for these sorts of things when making the hookup in the first place; and depending on materials provided by the alarmco AND telco, the customer for not reading the FINE manual (assuming there is a note somewhere in there to be aware of this sort of issue).

And of course, this all assume that the problem IS related a DSL installation...

Interesingly, this is a similar idea to one that affected a friend's cable modem some years ago: when she originally had her cable internet installed, her provider was using those monstrous LANcity cable modems (the ones that look like car-audio amplifiers). When they "upgraded" her to a new Motorola modem, her internet suddenly stopped working. Numerous visits were made by technicians over the next six months, some with new modems (of the same type), some with signal boosters, one even running a new dedicated line from the terminal block to her desk. Their diagnostics all showed a good signal strength, the help-desk people could always communicate with the modems, but she wasn't getting an internet connection.

Finally, after an extended reaming-out by my friend, the company sent out one of their most senior techs, with instructions to stay on site until he had it fixed. It didn't take him long to determine that the cause was a missing earth-ground connection on the outside terminal block, which was leading to a 60Hz hum being induced on the all the cable drops in the house. It didn't affect the TVs or cable boxes, and the old modem had had more robust filtering, so it wasn't affected either, but the new modems couldn't "see through the noise".

Driving a new grounding stake and connecting the block to it cleared things up, but apparently that sort of hands-on troubleshooting was beyond the thinking of all the younger, fresh-out-of-tech-college technicians they'd sent out previously.

Reply to
Matt Ion

snipped-for-privacy@v3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...

Superman's dressing room.

Reply to
Roger W

messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@v3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com ...

That was a phone booth.

Reply to
Bob Worthy

Man... You guys are weird. :-)

Reply to
Frank Olson

Reminds me of when I had a cable modem installed in my old office. The installer put a nice pretty ground block on the outside of the building, then punched a hole in my wall. I went out and said, "There is a reason for putting a ground block in you know."

He replied, "Yeah it protects the equipment inside."

"Yeah, it needs to be ground to work though."

Deer in headlights look.

LOL. I called the cable company and made them come back out to drive a ground rod and ground the block.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

Anybody notice the original poster hasn't come back with any answers to our questions or comments?

Reply to
Bob La Londe

I thought that was Underdog.

Reply to
alarman

They're like cell phones, but you gotta buy cards in order to use them.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

what was wrong with the ground rod that was already there?

Reply to
Nym

You mean the one on the other side of the building where the electrical service was, or the one that wasn't there anywhere near where the cable guy brought in his cable?

Reply to
Bob La Londe

I yoosta have Underoo's and Garanimals.

Reply to
G. Morgan

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