Business ProfileforWestco Security & Technology Systems

WESTCO has been my alarm monitoring company for over 14 years after they repaired the system that my former company wanted to repair. Besides repairing the alarm system, WESTCO programmed the alarm system with the new telephone number that would alert the WESTCO monitoring station. Last November, when I tested my system, it failed to communicate with the monitoring station. A WESTCO technician promptly came out to diagnose the problem and found that the telephone number that they had programmed for the alarm system to call was no longer correct: it had been a seven-digit number but now had to be a ten-digit number. Effectively, although I was paying a fee for this monitoring service, I had had no service for over a year. Since WESTCO is the keeper and programmer of that telephone number, a number not disclosed to me, I requested that WESTCO do two things. First, alert other customers with similar alarm systems that their telephone numbers need to be reprogrammed. Second, refund the amount of money that I had paid for the monitoring service for the time that the alarm was not being monitored. After an exchange of two letters, WESTCO has refused to take either of the actions that I requested. Their position is that if a customer were to test their alarm system monthly, as they recommend, they would have discovered the problem much earlier. My position is that even one month without being monitored is too much. Moreover, I fear that like me, there still may be customers whose experience with the reliability of their alarm system is such that they don’t test very often. Indeed, we have had no alarm system failures since it was repaired in 1997. I believe that WESTCO's refusal to alert their customers about this potential problem shows an egregious disregard for their customer’s safety. How many of their customers are still not being monitored and what will happen in an emergency situation?