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Astrid of Honolulu, HI February 13, 2009

We are a military family living in private partnership housing, meaning that the housing developer Forest City owns the homes and operates them renting to military personnel stationed in Hawaii. We moved into a new unit, and part of this unit was an alarm system. Upon our move the Forest City manager told us that Forest City is working out a contract with APN Inc, and that in approx. two months after our move in June 2007 Forest City will pick up the quarterly payments and we do not have to pay the contractor. In the meantime, Forest City would reimburse our payments starting July 07.

I acted with a general power of attorney on behalf of my daughter, who is the active duty member on deployment at that time, and signed the contract in good faith since the contractor also insured me that he will only charge us directly for two months and then the payments to him will be by Forest City. Well, after two months, we see a different contractor activating security systems for our neighbors who had just moved in. When I inquired I was told that the contractor APN Inc was too expensive and Forest City selected another company in Ohio to monitor these housing units in Hawaii. So we were stuck paying our own bills and then submitting the invoices to Forest City. During the first few months it became difficult to make payments to the contractor, because if we would send payments then sometimes they would overlap with late notices and we would pay double, or if I would call the payment in with my credit card and the secretary accepting the payment over the phone but then ending up not processing it, and we are getting late notices again.

In short, the provider had very unprofessional system of invoicing and bill collecting, we now pay by money order and send payments with certified mail. Of course we would have rather that contractor from Forest City where we did not have to worry about this at all.

These back and forth late notices and collection agency threats lead me to write a cancellation notice. The contractor maintains that we signed a contract for FIVE years, and if we want to get out, we need to pay the remainder of the contract. Now we are vacating this housing unit, and canceled the contract, whereas the contractor demands military movement orders as proof that we are leaving the Island, otherwise we are stuck with the contract regardless if we are using his services or not. I have absolutely no trust in this contractor and we just would like to end our contract.

The contract states that if we do not cancel 30 days prior to the end of the five years, it will automatically renew for another five years. There is no clause stating that military people need to show orders if they are canceling prior to the end of the five year contract. Five years seems a long time for a contract, and I would have NEVER signed this if it hasn't been for the fact that the representative told me that we would only be in this for the two months prior to Forest City picking it up.

We did the alarm right away when we moved in because in our previous military rental unit our neighbor was robbed, and the burglar had broken into the unit in the evening and stayed in her closet all night, that frightened us to the extend that we felt a real need for an alarm system. Especially since my daughter is deployed (Navy) often, since 2006 she had three six month deployments, so I am alone with my grandchild.

I have a witness who was present when the APN Inc representative told me that Forest City would take over in two month. I contacted Forest City and they are not interested in working with this man because they said he is too expensive. There are about 30 renters right now who have been told the same thing and must end up paying for five years. Can anyone give me some advise? I thank you so much.

The economic damage that we experience is that we must pay for a service and then seek reimbursement from Forest City, sometimes that can take up to a month, and we are out of that money until then. Emotionally we do not feel safe because on two occasions we accidentally set off the alarm by opening the door before deactivating the alarm, and neither time we were called by the contractor, although the alarm was ringing a good two minutes before we deactivated it. That led us to believe he is not even monitoring.

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