Legal Question in Consumer Law in Florida

I have been with a security alarm company for ten years. The company that I signed the contract with was Strategic Technologies. Sometime during the ten years, Strategic was bought out by Devcon.

I never signed another contract with Devcon. I just continued to pay the monthly monitoring fee. Usually paying this on a yearly basis.

In July of 2009, my alarm started going off in the early morning hours. I called Devcon and was told that Devcon and Bright House were not compatible. I called Bright House and they came to my home over 12 times to correct the problem, telling me that it was a problem with my alarm company and not them.

I called my alarm company again and was told that I would have to upgrade my equipment for $399 and increase my monitoring fee from $13.34 to $28 per month. I said that I could not afford to do this. That was the only thing they could offer me. So I continued to call Bright House who continued to come out to try to correct the problem.

Finally, the beginning of December it was to the point where it only went off every two days, but not during the day, I didn't think. I came home one day, and my neighbor was very upset because my alarm had sounded for 30 minutes. On December 14th I called Devcon and was told the same thing again. I then called them back to cancel my service. I was then told that I only needed a panel upgrade which they could do and it was very simple. The man that I talked to was borderline rude and said he wouldn't be able to get anyone to my house until January 6, 2010. I tried to wait for them, but the alarm kept going off and I was frankly fed up. They knew all along that it was a simple problem, but they wanted me to get the upgraded service and increased monitoring fee.

I decided to cancel their service because I didn't feel that they were concerned about my safety. I was told that I would have to pay an early termination fee, which I couldn't believe. I was told it would cost me $86.00. On January 12th I received a bill, the first one, for $256.93, in a letter saying that if I don't respond by January 25th, they would forward my account to a 3rd party collection agency.

My question is am I bound by the original contract that I signed with Strategic, but never with Devcon? Do they have the right to turn me over to a collection agency? What avenues do I have to fight this?

Thank you.

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