Advanced Alarm Company, Colorado Springs, CO 30-Year Customer Charged 4Xs Above the actual Cost of Service Colorado Springs Colorado

Jennifer, tell the whole story and don’t try to justify the actions of your company with lies. 

I am Cliff Stewart, Chairman of Colorado Springs Fellowship Church, the church that Advanced Alarm tried to rip off after 30 years of business.  Once this situation happened, we wondered how many times over the last 3 decades we had been ripped off by Advanced Alarm unbeknownst to us; not to mention the countless number of referrals we provided to your company.  The truth in response to your lies are below:

The Colorado Springs Fellowship has never used another security company. We have been using Advanced Alarm from the beginning. This property was built in 2000 and Advance Alarm installed everything security-related in that house. The treasurer and pastor never wanted to see people as they passed by the home. The purpose was to have security cameras in order to identify vandals damaging the property.

2. Advanced Alarm gave a proposal with no itemization of prices.  After doing business with a company for 30 years, you’d expect honesty and integrity to be included with the price. We never thought for a moment that a company we had been loyal to for over 30 years would be anything but honest and respectable.

3. The church received the proposal and was told that it would take several weeks for the equipment to arrive. If Advanced Alarm assumed that we were getting competitive bids, that was just ignorance on their part. Every time we have had Advanced Alarm to do a job for us, we never sought out their competitors because we are loyal and believed that they were people of integrity. The treasurer accepted the contract in good faith believing that you would be fair.

 4. As stated before, the church accepted the contract in good faith and they were told it would take weeks to get the equipment here. We never knew what the breakdown of the items and what they would cost. The proposal was generic with summarized prices. I was out of time when the equipment finally arrived and they came to install. When I returned I saw the proposal and I saw the boxes of the equipment they were attempting to install. That is when I questioned the price because it was obvious to me that the costs was exceptionally inflated. It took over 50 man-hours to install 4 cameras because your technicians were not competent at their job.  The camera placement had to be changed by us, as the customer, because your technician had a camera pointed at the middle of a maple tree which, again, points to the incompetence of your employees. The church never told Advanced Alarm to place the cameras in ridiculous places.

 5. I called Advanced Alarm to ask why the church was being charged 4 times the RETAIL price for each camera and why Advanced Alarm felt it necessary to rip off a customer that had been loyal for 30 years. The installation was not complete at this time because, as previously stated, the technicians had no idea what they were doing.

6. Once Advanced Alarm was caught trying to rip off the church, Advanced Alarm offered to lower the total cost of the job $2000. When that offer was refused because it was still unfair, Mr. Kraft tried to scheme a way to get the money paid to HIS charity. He wanted us to pay the full cost of the system they were overcharging us for to his very own charity. We are not concerned with the fact that Mr. Kraft wanted to match a donation made to himself. That would not change the fact that we were grossly overcharged. Furthermore, they had no right to tell us who we needed to donate to. If we were ever going to make any kind of donation, it would be to a charity that we chose, not to the man ripping us off in the first place.

7.  If you ask the judge or any of the jurors if they would’ve paid exorbitant prices, what do you think their answer would have been? The judge instructed the jury not to respond based on what they thought was fair if it was them in the church’s position. The purpose of having a jury of your peers is so that regular people, who are not trying to rip a customer off, would feel about the situation. The retail price of each camera was close to $850; Advanced Alarm charged nearly $3000 each.  They charged over $200 for a TV mount that could be bought at Home Depot for $35.  We did not make up the 4x the amount issue. We actually took the boxes that the items they were attempting to install, and looked them up online for ourselves. Since we are not resellers, the prices we got were retail, but Advanced Alarm, no doubt got them at a lower cost than we could. How is that not a rip-off?!

 8.  The equipment installed by the competitor company was the equipment needed for the job.  Advanced Alarm proposed and charged for a system that could run a large department store.  Then Advanced Alarm increased the retail price to bilk a customer.  If the WHOLESALE price had been increased, that would have been reasonable.  Advanced Alarm’s equipment was professionally removed and returned to them. The new equipment that replaced that from advanced alarm was far from inferior. Advanced Alarm was still using antiquated push button equipment. The new systems are touchscreen and wireless. Advanced Alarm still had their alarm system connected through a telephone line, which an intruder could cut, and completely bypass the security measures that were put in place.

9.  The only unwise decision made by the church was to trust Advanced Alarm to be fair in business. We began questioning the price when the incompetent technicians were attempting to install an outdated overpriced system. The church would not have gained anything by paying Mr. Kraft through his charity. Overpriced is overpriced, no matter how Advanced Alarm planned to extort the money from the church. The overpriced antiquated system was professionally removed and packaged and returned to Advanced Alarm because we are people of integrity, and we would not keep or damage equipment we were not going to pay for, once the company we had trusted for 3 decades decided to rip us off. We never believed that having the system removed and returned would negate the contract. We honestly believed that Advanced Alarm, a well-respected company, would treat a faithful, honest customer with the decency and respect of owning up to what they had done wrong and correct the price to something within reason. We welcome the public to look at our actions, because we acted in good faith and were deceived by Advanced Alarm. This complaint is filed so that others would beware. We have found several other instances where Advanced Alarm has wronged other clients. We are now much wiser, and would never do business with an ill-reputable company like Advanced Alarm. We now have a new system which is state of the art with more than 3x the amount of cameras for a fraction of the price Advanced Alarm tried to bilk us out of.

10.  Paying the agreed upon amount to Mr. Kraft’s charity does not negate the fact that the cost was a rip-off.  The church has a benevolence program in place and prides itself in the outreach that is provided to the local community. I am never speechless, and I gave their attorney the same answer that I am putting in this complaint. Paying the outrageous amount to ANYONE does not change the fact that it is too much. After how unscrupulous Advanced Alarm has been through this whole ordeal, why would we trust a charity that would have someone like Mr. Kraft with no moral convictions to speak of, on their board of directors? Once you have shown us that you have no morals, we will no longer do anything with you. Our donations go to charitable organization that we know are not connected to crooked and unscrupulous businessmen. The jury’s opinion was distorted as a result of a judge, who was not doubt a friend of Advanced Alarm’s attorney, instructed the jury not to make their decision properly. If every judge gave bad instructions to the jury, we would have more of this kind of injustice than we already do. We never wanted to not pay for what they were doing, in spite of the fact that it was outdated. All we asked was that we be charged a fair price and be treated like the good loyal customers we had been for over 30 years. Advanced Alarm is a greedy dishonest company who doesn’t mind cheating their clients. Consumers-BEWARE.  Others have complained of Advanced Alarm’s unscrupulous actions as well:  bbb.org/southern-colorado/business-reviews/security-control-equipment-and-system-monitors/advanced-alarm-company-in-colorado-springs-co-5995402/customer-reviews

Although Advanced Alarm has provided services to the church for about 30 years, the home in question had an existing Camera System, one installed by a competitor ten to fifteen years earlier (i.e., the church did not use Advanced Alarm for that install).  The church treasurer asked that the system be upgraded.  She and the pastor wanted to be able to identify people walking by the home.

2.       Advanced Alarm gave the treasurer a written proposal.  The proposal set forth the equipment which would be installed, and the cost for labor and equipment.

3.       The church did not respond to the proposal for several weeks.  Advanced Alarm assumed that the treasurer was seeking competitive bids.  Eventually, however, the treasurer accepted the proposal by signing the document. 

4.       Once the treasurer signed the contract, Advanced Alarm scheduled the install for about three weeks later.  Neither she nor anyone else used that time to tell Advanced Alarm it believed charges were excessive.  It took over 50 man-hours to complete the install.  During that time the church pastor personally approved placement of the cameras.

5.       Once Advanced Alarm completed the installation, Mr. Cliff Stewart called Advanced Alarm.  He wanted to renegotiate the contract terms.  He accused Advanced Alarm of trying to “rip off” the church.

6.       Advanced Alarm refused to reduce the price which the church previously promised to pay.  However, Advanced Alarm’s President (Ed Kraft) told Mr. Stewart that he would be satisfied if the church donated the entire contract amount to Vision Trust, a Christian charity.  At mediation Mr. Kraft “doubled down” on the offer, stating that if the church donated the contract price to Vision Trust, Mr. Kraft would match the donation.  The church refused both offers. 

7.       Advanced Alarm sued the church, and the church countersued, making the same arguments set forth in this complaint.  A jury of six rejected the church’s arguments.  The judge and jury found that the contract was not unfair and entered judgment on the basis of the jury verdict. Furthermore, the jury and judge agreed that the charges were not even near 4x the amount of cost.

8.       At trial the church called as witnesses employees of the company that replaced the equipment that had been installed by Advanced Alarm.  Those employees identified the equipment which they installed.  That equipment was dramatically inferior to that installed by Advanced Alarm.  Also, the church claims that Advanced Alarms equipment was removed, returned and then they had the other company bid the job.

9.       To summarize, the church made a series of unwise decisions.  Entering into the contract with Advanced Alarm was NOT one of them.  The first unwise decision was the effort to negotiate the contract only after Advanced Alarm spent fifty-plus hours installing the equipment.  The second unwise decision was to refuse Mr. Kraft’s offer, one which would have represented a win for the church, and a win for the orphans helped by Vision Trust.  The third unwise decision was to tear out the equipment, apparently under the mistaken belief that by so doing it would be negating the contract. 

The fourth unwise decision was replacing a state-of-the-art system with a vastly inferior system (thus leaving the church legally obligated to pay for two systems, not just one).  The fifth unwise decision was to pay two law firms to make frivolous arguments about why it should not have to pay the amount it had promised to pay.  Having heard from a judge and jury, and not liking what they said, the church is making a sixth unwise decision, the filing of this complaint, and thus subjecting the church’s actions to public scrutiny. 

10.   One last comment.  At trial Mr. Stewart admitted that Mr. Kraft had offered to consider the matter resolved if the church donated the agreed-upon amount to a Christian charity.  Our attorney asked  him how he squared that offer with his accusation that Advanced Alarm was greedy, and just wanted to rip-off the church.  He didn’t have an answer.  There is no logical answer, because the actions of Advanced Alarm are not consistent with those of a greedy or dishonest company.  This was the jury’s opinion also.  They were shocked that the church did not accept Mr. Kraft’s generous offer and donate the disputed money to a Christian charity that helps feed and clothe poverty-stricken children.