KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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comment on Sellers representations re the cs lines
May 20, 2025
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comment on Sellers representations re the cs lines Part 5 from article on May 6, 2025
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Ken,
This one stuck a nerve. My company was a customer of Alarm Central from day one after they bought Tamco. That relationship lasted over 30 years until they sold out and broke my heart. The company that bought them left the accounts alone for about a year, through the recourse period. When they cut over to their software without a decent beta test, things went to hell in a hand basket. We had to move. We moved to Security Central, a forth generation closely held CS who used the same software to which our accounts were formatted. When I went back in business in 1985, as a bussman's holiday, I went to trade shows representing various companies. When working with central stations, we advised our new dealers to get a local phone number, program your dialers into it and call forward that number to the central station toll free number. When we moved our accounts after all the data entry was done at Security Central, cut over day was reprogramming the call forward number to the new number.
I have an Agreement to Transfer Ownership of Toll-free Service for that number. The only conditions are 1. Dealer's billing is current, 2. must notify CS 10 working days prior to transfer and 3. notify CS when completed. Even with that, always try to stay on as good a relationship as possible with the company that you are leaving.
Stan Corn,
Alarms, Inc.
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Response
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This came up in the discussion of representations typically requested by buyers of alarm accounts when they attorney representing the buyer doesn't know the alarm industry. For a buyer intending to move the monitored accounts to a new central station it's vital to know that the accounts can be moved in bulk without having to re-program each account. The representation requested is that the selling alarm company owns the central station line. The alarm dealer rarely owns those lines and most dealers don't realize they don't own it. Some do realize it and get the central station to agree to transfer the line if the dealer wants to move, but that needs to be specifically requested, negotiated and drafted, because it's not in the central station's Dealer Agreement.
The point of the article was to warn against making a representation that's not accurate, though the real criticism was directed against the buyer's and their attorneys requesting and demanding such a representation when they should know its not accurate.
But the take-away for all alarm dealers should be that you need to get the Rider to Central Station Dealer Agreement and insist it be attached to the Dealer Agreement. That way the issues that are important, and yet fair to both sides, will govern the central station's agreement.
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com