I have a monitored burglar alarm system monitored by the above company. After a recent (and routine) service visit by their engineer, we discovered that my system was no longer calling the central monitoring station.

Further investigation revealed that the engineer had been instructed to substitute the number dialled by the alarm panel from the standard Manchester number of 0161 to one commencing 09xxxx.  As my telephone line attached to the alarm has Premium Rate Call Barring, the call did not connect and the engineer had to seek advice.  He returned with the news that ADT had provided a different number, and all was well. That number now turns out to be an 0870 one, still connecting to the same Manchester centre!

In the scale of things, the alarm activation call is seldom longer than 20 seconds, but anyone with an ADT alarm system may find it has been set to dial a genuine PREMIUM rated number without their authority.

You have been warned!

More info obtained from the Security company ADT.

The 0906 number is only used on Business premises and NOT Residential - they should have 0870.

If your alarm box calls (on alarm activation or setting ON):-

    a Geo number (20 second call) - 5p (BT minimum charge) [Peak - Off Peak 5.5p]

    an 0870 number (20 second call) - 5p (BT minimum charge) [Peak & Off Peak]

- there's no cost difference during Daytime hours (0600-1800), but Off Peak it's cheaper using the 0870.

If however your Business premises uses the 0906 number, the upto 20 seconds activation call will cost you 10p (@30p/min they advise). Any details on which 0906 is used would be helpful in confirming the charge as they range from 10p upto £1.49 per minute (see  BT Pricing for details).  

The information I got was from a supervisor at Blackfriars House . He was insistant that 0906 was ONLY for Business, and that it only sent a call when Setting ON, not OFF.

BTW, what was the 0906 number it uses (in full) ??

I've done a company search today and found that a company called ADT has the same registered office as Modern Security Systems (known as Modern Alarms Ltd up to 19 May 1992).

I had business dealings with Modern Alarms in the '80's and gained a negative feeling for the company.  This even carried on when a few years later, the company who installed my system was acquired by Modern Alarms.

As a result of the take-over, I did not go with Modern Alarms but found a different company to maintain my system.

Because of this, I'm not surprised of ADT's actions.

http://money.guardian.co.uk/consumernews/story/0,,2056639,00.html

<<
Ben Whitney's father just could not work out why his phone bill was so high. He's retired and recovering from a stroke, so he asked his son to take a look at it. The thing puzzling him most was a 20p or 23p call every day, sometimes twice a day, to an 0906 number at 1.17am each morning. The calls had started months ago, and if they carried on were likely to add £100 a year to his bill.

The calls lasted only a few seconds, but the high cost alerted Mr Whitney to the fact that they must be premiumrate lines. Had some rogue dialler or trojan software hijacked his father's phone? He contacted industry regulator Icstis for help - and was astonished to discover that the premium rate calls were being auto-dialled from the family home's ADT burglar alarm as it made a daily registration contact with the ADT monitoring centre.
Mr Whitney and his father were flabbergasted. The alarm had cost more than £1,000 to install, plus monthly service charges . The last thing his father had expected was another £100 or so a year in premium rate phone calls. "I traced the number via the Icstis website to ADT alarms," says Mr Whitney. " I made some enquiries and was told that this type of ADT alarm has to 'check in' every day by calling in to their system. The units come with an expensive revenue-generating number as default but I was told they can be modified to call a cheaper 0870 number by an ADT engineer."

[...]

ADT's website says: "ADT reserve the right to programme the alarm panel to signal using a premium rate telephone number. An alarm signal takes approximately eight seconds to transmit, therefore the cost of a call is typically a few." Unfortunately, the message stops there. It can be assumed that the missing word is "pence".

There is no indication to customers that the number can be changed to an 0870 number, which would cost 7p a day rather than 23p.

Fortunately for Mr Whitney, an ADT technician popped round to his Sussex home soon after Guardian Money intervened, and his alarm will now call the 0870 number every day.
>>

Any commercial operator is entitled to charge what it likes for its services, so long as this is agreed by those who enter into a contract with it.

Is the charge for a 10 minute wait on a call part of the agreed terms?

Although not formally regulated as a "premium rate service", that is what this is.

But surely if it was in your contract to dial a geographical number and they have not amended the contract to that effect, they must be in breach of your agreement. However I would guess that they did indeed send some blurb and perhaps you did not read it or the print was too small to be able to read it!!!!

I bet if you complained they would say that hey did let you know.

SilentCallsVictim wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2009 at 8:58am:


You seemed to ignore all the points made by the OP that he is already paying a monthly service charge (as my mother does) to ADT for the alarm monitoring service.  It is therefore immoral and reprehensible that ADT tries to earn further hidden revenue that is not up front and not part of people's conscious choice when they opt for the alarm contract with ADT for things like phone calls to customers services and for alarm activations (in the case of my mother's alarm an 0871 number is used if the alarm is set off as it was taken over by ADT from another smaller alarm company.

Your return to your original position when you first appeared on this website that commercial companies can make whatever hidden charges they like via phone calls renders you, as I have always thought you to be from the outset, an unfit person to attempt to lead this campaign (even though that is blatantly what you are now trying to do).  Everyone else in this campaign (and in particular Dave who moderates the forum and spends so much of his free time finding the geographic alternative numbers and maintaining them) is just as opposed to the commercial ripoff lines because all of them involve consumers not realising they are paying an extra charge when they make a phone call.  Your continued suspect views on this point are extremely disappointing.  Perhaps you are in fact a Fifth Column for the opposition within our campaign?