I bought a home in the summer of 2002. The previous owners had an alarm system at the residence. One day while my wife and I were unpacking, Bernard (Bernie) Hyland of Mt. Airy Alarms Systems knocked on our door. He never called prior or sent us notice in the mail, he just showed up.
So he proceeds to talk us into using his service only because we thought he would never leave our house until we said "yes". Bernie was also the original installer of the system when the house was being built. He did what he had to do to get the system running, we signed his contract for monitoring fees of $22/month.
In the first two months our system alarmed about 5 times for no good reason in the middle of the night. When we called about the problem, Bernie denied the problem existed and said the system was working fine. So when that was told to us, my wife and I decided we will coninue to pay out our yearly contract on a month to month basis, but never activate the alarm system for fear that we would be needlessly awoken from the shrieking sirens installed in our home.
This spring my wife and I happened to build a new home through the builder of our previous home. It just so happened that Bernie from Mt Airy and our builder have some sort of agreement that he installs alarm systems in all the new homes being built. My wife and I already knew we wouldnt be using the alarm system in the new home and made Mr. Hyland well aware of that fact on many occasions.
Mr. Hyland persistently called us, mostly on my personal cell phone, to persuade us to use his service. I told him "no" we didnt want the alarm system activated, and that we will pay what we owe him for the rest of the years monitoring fees. When we finally moved into the new home my wife and I received a certified letter from Bernard Hyland threatening to charge us fees for liquidated damages and other unfounded fees if we didn't sign up with him. My wife and I held our ground and said "no". So now we have recently received a bill for $284 for uninstallation fees from BOTH homes, and for being default on our contract, and early termination fees.
Well, of course we know that we never had his "software" installed into our new home so why is he charging us uninstallation fees on our new home? And what exactly is he uninstalling? He is threatening that if this isnt paid by mid July then he will charge us another for of $450 for "liquidated damages". It is also written in very small print of our previous contract that if the person receiving his services wishes to no longer use his service after the year is up, then they have to send him certified letter 30 days prior to the end of the contract.
His tactics don't seem legal and I want to get this out to warn people that this man and his company are out to get your money. The service he provides is also the worst I've seen by far. And generally speaking Mr. Hyland has always tried to be intimidating to us so beware who you do business with.
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