Life Alert - Contract Terms

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Some consumers have complained that Life Alert has refused to release them from a contract following a death or institutionalization. Life Alert denies that this is its policy.

With regard to your point about Life Alert and our contract, we in fact do not hold customers to the terms of the three year agreement in the instance where our customer passes away. Our agreement clearly sets out that the customer is released from the agreement if they should pass away or move to an environment where they have 24 hour care and provide us with written evidence of such.

We have been fortunate to have the privilege to be able to save many of our customer's from harm's way by responding to their emergencies in a very timely and reliable fashion when they have utilized our services over the last 20 years. We have direct contact with over 350,000 consumers across the US each year. We care that each consumer/customer be treated fairly and with respect by the members of the Life Alert family. We are committed to addressing any customer's concern as we continue to make a real difference in the lives of our subscribers' and their families while striving to maintain superior customer service.

We look forward to working with your staff, as we do with the BBB staff, to make certain that we address any customer concern that a subscriber takes the opportunity to set forth on Consumeraffairs.com

Respectfully

John Brady, Life Alert

Tammy of Aberdeen MD (6/3/04):
I work for an agency that supports individuals with disabilities. Mr. P, an individual with a traumatic brain injury contacted Life Alert's Mr. Moore to order the system. Mr. P then signed papers to have the payments deducted from his roommate, Mr. B's account. Mr. B did not sign anything.

It was brought to Mr. B's attention in January when he was hospitalized for colon cancer, that he was paying for a system he was not using. He sent a letter to Life Alert asking for payments to stop. Mr. B was hospitalized January through May 2004 and payments have yet to stop. Unfortunately, Mr. B passed away on May 5, 2004 and is unable to send this himself.

I'm appalled that an agency that is supposed to "help" people has a man like Mr. Moore working for them. (He) is manipulating individuals with disabilities who have short-term memory loss and cognitive disabilities that do not allow them to make decisions such as these on their own. Mr. B's mother is also in her eighties and does not need to deal with this in addition to her son's death. I plan to pursue legal action since Life Alert was apparently unable to read the letter sent by Mr. B on 2/24/04.

Damages: $150.00 for three months deducted from Mr. B's account for a system he was not using. Payments were never authorized by him.

Damage Resulting: We have paid almost $1,000 for services not received.

Tom of Encinitas CA (5/8/03):
When my father became ill, my mother was sold a Life Alert subscription. The $500 down, $50/mo payments seemed excessive, but she felt that if it didn't work out, she could always cancel. When my father passed away she did call them, only to learn (for the 1st time) that she had a year remaining on a contract. On top of that, her $1600 of payments did not buy anything but service, since the box & detectors were still the property of Life Alert!

The salesman negotiated with her about how much she would pay to have it removed. After I discovered the box had not been working for several months, they were willing to cancel the service without a payoff. I have yet to see any refunds for the months they could not have provided service for, or the last month (I cancelled on the 6th). I believe the Life Alert product has value, but the company practices are best avoided. There are just too many competing products and options out there.

Note: According to Life Alert, they cannot tell if a box is not working since it is a call in system, and the box calls in only for an alarm. Funny how every other subscription cable/satellite box calls in periodically, and the subscription co. knows when it dosen't.

Ronnie of Jackson NJ (11/7/02):
I got the system for my mother when she was alone. Two years later she became stricken with dementia and now resides in a nursing home. I was now told that I would have to pay $300 to disconnect the service as I have to pay off the contract. When I first got the service I recall being told that in case of death or institutionalization the service would be terminated without consequences.

My mother has no more funds and is now on Medicaid so this falls on the family to pay this amount.

If Ronnie's mother is now a ward of the state and the contract is in the mother's name, the family has no obligation whatsoever to Life Alert.

Elissa of Alice Springs, Australia (8/16/02):
I live in Australia and am writing this after reading Life Alert Emergency Response (3/22/02) complaint on the ConsumerAffairs.com web site. My 87 year old father, Edward Seinfeld had the same thing happen to him in his dealings with Life alert. He entered into a contract with Life Alert after he was told that a call to Life Alert would elicit a prompt response. My father is 87 years old. He has had two coronary artery by-pass operations, Cardiac Arrhythmia due to atrial fibrillation requiring a pacemaker.

He is the primary advocate (he has to feed my mother dinner every night at her nursing home due to lack of staff. He had to hire a caretaker to feed her at lunchtime... another problem in our society) for my mother who has Alzheimer's and my brother who has Down's Syndrome. He tried the Life Alert on Oct. 9, a few days after he entered the contract and it did not work. No response.

He told Life Alert he was cancelling the agreement. He continued to be billed on his credit card. He contacted his credit card company and cancelled his credit card and had the company reissued him new card with a new number only to find out that Life Alert were able use the new number. He had no idea that the bank had a commitment to Life Alert to pay for the duration of the contract. This was never mentioned to him by the salesman. Plus, Life Alert broke the contract by not responding to the call.

I know that this situation has caused him an enormous amount of stress. He is recovering from pneumonia, my bother with Down's Syndrome, had a critical eye operation during all this. He can not cope with this added stress.

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