My mother recently told me about a wonderful company that has state of the art smoke detectors and she's getting them installed soon. When she had them installed and I learned it cost her $2700, I couldn't believe it and wanted to know how good these things were to be worthy of that price. She was never told the price of anything until they were already installed, the invoice is not itemized, just has a total price.
She had 3 heat detectors, 4 smoke detectors, and 2 fire extinguishers installed. She couldn't tell me all that much to make me believe in these things, but assured me I'd learn better if I came to a presentation at her house (And I could only come if I brought my wife, no single people allowed). When I reluctantly sat through this presentation (which took more than 2 hours) I learned exactly what this was about... FEAR.
The attention was focused on couples with children, continuously giving them senarios of their young ones dying horrificly in a house fire, making them believe the smoke detectors they alreay have will not work in time and they will all die. They showed pictures on a slide show of burnt homes and burnt cribs, and how fast a fire can grow. They asked couples to tell them how they were going to escape from a house fire, and told them they would die before they could do anything.
After this presentation, I was still disguisted with the cost of this equiptment, but they did have me fooled on one thing. The heat detectors, this is a new idea and something you cant find in Home Depot, sounds great. It has a fuse that triggers a clock spring when it reaches 117 degrees farenheit, which then rings a bell for 5 minutes. It's loud, it needs no batteries, no maintenace, it works in parts of the house like the kitchen because it won't make false alarms and lasts forever right?
I LIT A PAPER TOWEL ON FIRE IN MY MOTHERS KITCHEN AND GUESS WHAT HAPPENED? The old smoke detectors that are still in her house went off!!! Not one piece of detech equiptment went off, not even the smoke detector in the next room which has an infared eye that "sees" smoke and detects it sooner. Do you want to know your kitchen is on fire when the smoke starts rising or when the fire is big enough to hit that heat detector, I'd rather have the occasional false alarm when my wife burns my dinner.
Afterwards, I questioned the rep for about 15 minutes about how much this product costs. I came up with every possible question to find out any pricing information (single unit, package, installation), I even told them I had the exact same model home that my mother did, and they would not tell me any prices. I was told that I needed to set up an appointment to have my home checked out personally, but I need to do it in the next 3 days or else he wont be in the state anymore. Thouroughly upset with the entire ordeal, thats when I started to investigate the company, finding plenty of other people feeling the same way I do.
They claim they are interested in educating people and saving lives, yet they only tell you to buy their product at an outrageous price. They will not tell you how much it costs till they've drilled holes in your ceiling and it's to late. They will tell you that it will pay for itself if you can recruit other people to buy these products (well thats what they told my mom, not me). They have changed their company name several times, and relocated. Supposedly (still looking into it) these kinds of detectors haved been federally recalled.
If you're currently dealing with this company remember you only have 3 business days to change your mind after you sign the contract and be free of it. Don't believe me, get their stuff, light a "controlled fire" in your house and decide for yourself. If anyone knows a legal action that would help my mom get out of this, please respond, It sickens me that she was sucked into this scam.
I'm currently
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