Boston is not offering free alarm systems to residents
The mayor's office reports some door-to-door marketers are attempting to foist burglar-alarm services on residents by claiming the city - actually, Mayor Menino himself - is springing for the installation costs.
Mayor Menino is not amused. If anybody knocks on your door from GE Security Systems and Versatile Marketing, tell 'em to take a hike, he advises:
The company installs their system, and although they do not charge an "installation fee," they collect social security and credit card information and sign up the resident for $49/month service charge for the system's maintenance. The City of Boston and Mayor Menino do NOT have any relationship with this company and remind residents that they should not give out their personal information to anyone they do not know who calls or visits their home.
Comments
General Electric in door-to-door sales fraud?
I'm amazed (and dismayed) that a major blue-chip company, General Electric, is perpetrating this fraud.
Not really GE Involved
The company involved is Versatile Marketing Solutions, a.k.a. VMS Alarms. According to their website, VMS sells/installs security hardware made by GE, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are misrepresenting themselves as "GE Home Security" when they show up at doors.
A quick Google search for VMS turned up many "rip off report" type complaints as well as a settlement with the Pennsylvania Attorney General for Do Not Call List violations.
hmmm... something mayor
hmmm... something mayor thomas m. menino did not want to put his name-tag on? thats surprising... ;)
Secretary of State too
I was at someone's house who had one of these people knock on the door and say that the secretary of state had sent them to install GE alarms. The equipment was free but the monitoring was $49 (which was only explictly mentioned when the homeowner asked what the monitoring fee was -- before this, the dude was all FREE FREE FREE FREE ALARM FREE IT'S FREE).
Secretary of State?
Hillary Clinton or Bill Galvin? Either way, seems like kind of an odd name to drop. Why not the vice president?
Yes.
He was saying "secretary of state" but flashed some paper signed by William F. Galvin that seemed to have nothing to do with his actual ploy and I think was just a letter certifying that his business can do business or something (I was at someone else's house or else would have asked to see it and would have pointed our that a corporation certificate or whatever it was wasn't the same as Hillary Clinton having personally sent him).
That's worth calling Galvin's office about
I hope you or your friend do so. He won't take kindly to people using his name for such purposes.
And you don't want to get Bill Galvin mad
He'll buy ads on local TV stations and glower at you mercilessly.