Unethical 3-Year Auto Renewal

After my 3 years contract was over, I called Vector to cancel my services and they said that my contract was automatically renewed for another 3 years….3 years…I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This is total rip-off. To me, it is outright cheating and unethical. They could have send me something in writing.

The salesperson who sold the security system said that after the initial 3-year subscription period, I can cancel the security system any time without any penalties. What he failed to mention was that after three years, you would need to put a cancellation request in writing 30 days prior to the third year anniversary of the date our system was put in. Because we failed to do this, our contract has automatically renewed for another three years.

I spoke to couple of accounts managers at Vector and they were all rude and told me that I need to pay the 3-year contract balance, if I need to cancel it now. I don’t need the security system, and I am forced to pay on a monthly basis during this tough economic times.

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I have just experienced the exact same issue with Vector's Wilkes-Barre, PA office. The first person I called about canceling (I cannot recall the name) made it seem like it was simple to cancel and that I would even retain the equipment, I would just not have the monitoring. He said "before I go and do this, check with your homeowners insurance to see if they give you a discount for having security monitoring. If it covers the cost then why not keep it?" Nice gesture, so I checked. My insurance discount didn't come close to covering it, so I called back to cancel. At this point I spoke to Amanda, who then proceeded to tell me that they would have to come out and take the equipment back for a fee, which took me by surprise. She said she would check my contract and get back to me just to be sure. When we spoke again, she informed me of the 3-year renewal and the 80% buyout. I couldn't believe it. I was taken aback by the incremental difficulty they gave me in trying to cancel. They're obviously trained to take us though this step-by-step, because they want us to keep the service under our own accord, and only whip out the 3-year auto renewal gun as last resort because now they have a disgruntled customer.

Bottom line is they have a sneaky sales tactic: the salesman came to my house on a weeknight before I could make dinner. He gets me to accept, installs the senors, runs tests, at which point it's now 9 PM and you just want this done. He shows you where to sign the contract, doesn't point out the auto-renewal in the fine print, which nobody has time, nor wants, to read in that situation. I even asked him about the term commitment, and all he said was "3 years." He said nothing about the auto-renewal. They count on you either not realizing the auto-renewal clause, or forgetting about it 3 years later in our busy lives. Then they have you.

What's worse in my case, the salesman didn't even fill in the term start and end dates in the term defining clause buried in the fine print. The next sentence in the clause is about the auto-renewal. It's obvious he didn't fill this in so I wouldn't notice that particular detail. Sneaky.

I'm going to write the BBB on this one. Vector Security employs an opt-out renewal and purposely avoid pointing it out at the beginning, and don't remind you when the anniversary arrives. That's just plain wrong. At least Time magazine and other businesses, send a friendly reminder every year that you have to contact them if you don't want the auto-renewal to occur. My hope is that because the salesman did not define the term start and finish dates, it's an incomplete contract that I can get out of. Check your contract for the same thing.