Legal Question in Consumer Law in Pennsylvania
Contract
Can a company have an automatic
renewal of an alarm system contract
for 3 years without notifying
consumer prior to auto renewing.
States in contract that after 3 years
contract will renew for 3 more if
within 60 days of contract end
notification is sent by consumer to
cancel. However no notice sent of
inpending date. Also in same
contract it states monthly fee will
not increase in the first 3 years. My
fee did go up. Does this give me any
legal recourse to end contract. I
want out and they state I am binded
to the automatic renewal, because I
never sent a letter. I never knew
that I needed to until I called and
they referred me to the contract. I
brought to their attention the fee
going up prior to the ended of orginal
contract. They state I still do not
have legal course out of the
contract.. HELP...
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Contract
You asked about getting out of a 3 year renewal.
Some companies are cagey this way. While technically you are stuck with the contract there isn't anything they can really do to collect.
I will assume that they provided equipment and that is why the first term was locked in. Had you canceled they could have claimed that the provided equipment was consideration for a term contract. But here, they didn't do anything to deserve a new three year term.
If you are up to the fight do what you need to do to end the contract. Send a letter, stop payments, even have your bank change account numbers if they have had EFT access.
Expect they will send the matter to collections and then deal with it as a collections matter under the FDCPA. You have other options that you should puruse also, such as filing a complaint with the BBB and the Attorney General's office. But generally, they can't make the argument that they should be paid for services which you do not want and to which they have provided no consideration for a new term.
You should have an attorney help you, but if you do some research in the library you can handle it yourself.
Regards,
Roger
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