I NEED INFORMATION ABOUT ADT AND FEDERAL REGULATIONS

Aug 01, 2007 9 Replies

I'm under the impression that my ADT system was hooked up in violation of federal law and need information on whether or not it is illegal for the system to be hooked up simply to a line inside the house, and not the outside line to allow line seizure.



ADT hooked up my system and never mentioned anything about it being hooked up incorrectly. When I tried to cancel on those grounds, they refused to waive my de-activation fee and stated that I was still under contract with them even though I signed a contract for a 100% operable system.



They offered to fix it and credit my account for a few months, but I can't trust them knowing that if something had happened, my wife and child could have been hurt.



If I knew where to find the federal statute, I would really have a case.



Can anybody help?



Please email snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net with any information you can help with. Thanks!



It's not a law. There are "tarriffs" in many states which govern use of telco lines. Screwing up on something like the RJ31X (alarm system telephone line interface) isn't a violation of law though.

In all probability the idiot who did the installation never told his boss about it either.

Technically, they're right. The only remedy in the agreement for such a mistake is for them to correct it.

If it's one of their so-called "Authorized Dealers" I wouldn't trust them either. However, that offer is a reasonable one assuming that there are no other problems with the installation.

To the best of my knowledge there's no such statute.

a complaint can be filed with FCC which see it only as a civil violation and low level at that.Every once and a while they take action on poorly installed telco products but do not hold your breath.

ADT has a slough of lawyers on staff for resolving legal issues in their favor. It seems to me that it is actually run as profit center for ADT. Having some ex ADT sales guys on staff I can tell you that they go after everything and everyone. Unless you have the time and money to dance with those guys, I'd say you'll have to take what you can get. I am not an attorney, but I doubt there are any criminal court remedies that would give you relief. There are pluses and minuses in dealing with a large corporation. I think you may have found a minus here.

I have already alerted the FBI, and they're on it. js

Didn't we just have a Chief Justice who had a line seizure?

TV law. i've never even seen local code requiring line seizure let alone a federal law.

But ADT doesn't use FBI products.

Sometime back, as an alarm failure expert, I was involved in a case against Westinghouse (or were they called Westec then?) alarm.

The case involved, among other things, whether the customer had the ability to disconnect the alarm from the phoneline (say, in the event of alarm equipment malfunction, as had occurred in this case).

As it was, the alarm had an RJ31X jack, but it was inside the locked alarm panel, and moreover, the subscriber had not been instructed on how to disconnect the alarm from the telco.

These facts, coupled with some clever tactics by competent Plaintiff's counsel, brought a $4.4MM jury verdict against the alarmco in favor of my client the alarm subscriber.

This is a very good reason for RJ31X jacks to be wired properly (not hotwired as many peel-n-stick mass marketers do), and readily accessible to subscribers.

Nick Lawrence Berkeley, CA

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

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