Why you should probably
NOT get a home alarm!
Your private patrol service
could be ripping you off!
What's really going on behind the scenes at some of these places!
You've seen the TV commercials preying on the fears of nervous homeowners. They hype up the problem of residential burglaries and unsafe neighborhoods in order to sell more alarm systems and patrol services. And who are the usual customers? Paranoid couch potatoes who think there's some sort of National Association of Burglars (or, NAB) which keeps a list of all houses without alarms, and even updates the list when a home alarm is temporarily out of order. These people think that if their alarm is inoperative for even one day, they will get burglarized!
On the TV commercial, the man or woman handling the alarm appears to be a mature person in their late 30's, working with the utmost professionalism, acting like they're really concerned.
Well, here's the real picture:
Most of the operators are high school graduates in their early 20's,
underpaid and overworked.
They have to work schedules that can change weekly, almost certainly working
through the weekends, and have very little of a real life outside of work.
They actually care very little for the clients at all,
because the client is just one of thousands of helpless bleating sheep.
It is totally unlike the "air of concerned professionalism" the
actors portray in the commercials. Most convenience store or
gas station clerks have more concern for their customers.
Believe it.
When an alarm comes in during the busier afternoon and evening hours, the police will put all non-emergency calls in a holding queue. So what constitutes an emergency? Only a 211 (armed holdup) at a business. (Perhaps the local Winchell's running out of donuts is second highest.)
All others, including residential panic alarms, are classified as "Code 30", meaning it's a plain old ringing alarm call. An alarm company operator may have to wait on hold up to 15 minutes or more before the LAPD will take the information.
Alarm companies supposedly have special police dept numbers to call in order to report alarms. If this is correct, we didn't seem to get much of a break.
To their credit, the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department answers phones and takes information a whole lot quicker, and from reports, responds very promptly to all alarms.
Remember that overzealous private security guard in the movie Grosse Pointe Blank? That's the kind of loser these companies are full of.
One patrol guy came along a street one night and saw 3 men standing next to a large rented moving truck on the street. He asked them what they were doing there at 1:00 am. They said they were moving. He waved and drove off. Sometime later that day, the client called and told us that their place had been cleaned out and "why didn't the patrol see anything??"
Here's another idiot story: a patrol guy was up in the hills one night at a housing development construction site which he needed to check on foot. When he was done checking the site, he found that he'd accidentally locked the keys in the patrol car! Thinking quickly but not very well, he found a rock and used it to break the car window to get back in. Guess how he tried to cover himself? He claimed, "Somebody shot out the window just as I was leaving!" His story fell apart after a police investigation found no bullet (or an exit hole from one) in the car. He 'fessed up, and was actually kept on for several more months until his patrol car mysteriously got banged up while supposedly parked at a fast-food place for lunch break. Then they got rid of him.
I could give you many more stories: the transient who tried to drive off in the patrol car; a building that got vandalized while the guard was taking a snooze right inside; a patrol car which caught on fire and the jerk driving it didn't even know it until the fire reached his car seat! That last one had reached legend status ("Cah on Fy-ah!") by the time they let me go.
The only kind of patrol that can do any good to prevent crime is a dedicated unit who never leaves your immediate neighborhood, with a response time of 2 minutes or less.
Some patrol beats have an incredible amount of territory to cover, areas several miles across. If another unit called in sick, or is busy getting refuelled, or is actually responding to another call, they tend to have adjacent beats cover the other areas. Most clients will never know, especially at night. Of course it all backfires when a bunch of alarms or calls come along at the same time (what I call the Red Chariot Effect), and then the customers start becoming aware of how little service they're getting for their money.
Beware of the thin excuses you'll get from the patrol company. They usually claim that the unit was delayed because of another call somewhere else. Fact is, the guy was in another area miles away and couldn't get over there fast enough.
There was a lot of corrupt operation going on at one point.
A couple of the weekend day-shift patrol guys once came up with a neat
method of kicking back. They kept logs of what patrol sections
they visited and had to regularly report, such as "RD17" which
stood for "reporting district 17" (modified from the official
LAPD patrol zone designations, including the same maps).
Eventually they came up with a sequence they could call in over
the radio at appropriate time intervals, based on actually doing
the route day after day until they had it down.
Guess what they were really doing? Both patrol cars would park behind some maintenance buildings on a dirt service road. They were out of sight of any residents. They were parked facing opposite each other but side-by-side, so the drivers could casually converse with the windows down. They could relax for hours this way without having to drive anywhere.
There's no telling how long they got away with it, but somebody got suspicious that their mileage didn't always add up to what it should have. So these two guys took care of that by heading for the freeway during the last 90 minutes of the shift, and driving as fast as they could from one end of the valley and back to the other again to make up the miles.
Finally, one day they got caught. A supervisor saw one of the distinctively painted and equipped patrol cars heading the other way on the freeway and started an immediate on-air radio check to see who it had to be, since none of them were supposed to be over there. Well, the culprit reported in and said he was in RD10. Right about then, there was a genuine bona-fide patrol call for him... in RD10 naturally, an area of about one-half mile square, so he should have reached it in 90 seconds or less. It took him over 20 minutes. He claimed he got lost. The supervisor actually beat him over to the location. (We learned about their hiding place later when one of the other patrol officers quit - he finked on them.)
Because of this type of thing, the company went to great expense
and outfitted all of the patrol cars with commercial fleet
radio tracking devices.
Their whereabouts could be instantly displayed
on a computer screen back at the station.
The patrol guys all screamed and howled about it, but the bottom line
was that it was for their own safety and for better efficiency
in dispatching. It also put the lazy deadbeats out of business.
The tracking screen could keep a complete full-shift record plotting
where the car went and at what time,
and even what speed it went from one point to another!
An alarm would sound if a unit was stationary
for more than 3 minutes without pressing his "Code 6" button
to signal he was out of the unit. Naturally the dispatcher would
know if he was out for some legitimate business or not.
Big Brother was now watching them.
In fact, I know exactly how you feel.
If I were in your position, I'd feel the same way.
You've given me all the facts I need, and I've got the resources to resolve the problem.
Now, if you'll give me one hour to pull the resources together, I'll call you back with the resolution, and we'll get this unfortunate situation taken care of."
If you hear words to this effect, beware! They're trying to manipulate you.
It is all supposed to pacify an angry customer, and for the gullible and unwary, it works. The operator promises to personally get to the bottom of the matter and call the client back.... Sure. Timing it so that they can go home before they have to do that.
Don't accept any of their prepared answers! Excuses only satisfy the person giving them (as they say at the Dale Carnegie class). It's designed to just get you off the phone and out of their hair.
Want to push their buttons right back? Use this line at the operator: "I could have been dead by now!" Believe me, they get this line a lot, and it bugs them more than you may think!
If they give you an excuse, make them give you some concrete facts, not generalizations. Above all, get the operator's full name -- don't settle for just a mysterious "operator number." It really does wonders once the operator's been put on the spot and knows that you know who they are.
Pick a busy evening around 11:00 pm. Friday and Saturday nights are best, as they will more likely be tied up on other calls. The reason for that time is because it's probably about when they're changing shifts, giving you the best chance to catch them on a slow response. The guy going off shift doesn't want to handle it (and the company doesn't want to pay overtime), and the guy coming on shift probably isn't quite ready to hit the street just yet.
Call the patrol company, and complain about a "dark car" that pulled up and stopped in front of your house with the lights off. Tell them you can hear the engine running. No, you don't have the license plate or know how many people are inside, you're afraid to go outside. Tell the company that you think they're casing your house, and demand they send the patrol to come check it out. Insist that the patrolman not come to your door because you don't want these people in the car to know you were the one that called (risking retaliatory action from them later). Also demand that the patrol company call you back when the patrol arrives at your house. Take note of how long it took the operator to take your information. It may be useful later. (Remember that phrase, "I could have been dead by now!")
Now time them (only don't tell them), and see how long they take to get there! If the patrolman came up to your door anyway, and/or they never did call you back, or otherwise failed to follow your exact instructions, go ahead and let them have a piece of your mind! They screwed up, let them know it. If they want to know where the car is that you called about (because of course it's not there by the time they arrived), tell them that it pulled away just before the patrol got there, and didn't he see it??
If on the other hand you're actually pleased with their response, say whatever you wish, but you should probably stick to the story that the strange car left moments ago.
It was a general requirement that customers asking us to do this for more than 2 weeks were supposed to: call the post office to tell them to hold the mail; stop the newspaper delivery; arrange for someone to water the plants.
You can guess what happened: some customers would expect us to do all that for them, which we could not do.
Sometimes an alarm-only customer would call us to request this service. We had to inform them we couldn't because they did not pay for the regular patrol service. They'd go berzerk, naturally. We finally had to tell them, "OK, I'll take your word for it that you say you do pay for that service. So we will do it this time, and settle it with the accounting office next week." I wish they had cracked down on this, billing the customer for that, but they never did. Some alarm-only customers knew exactly what they were doing and got away with it over and over, which wasn't fair to the other customers who were paying for the patrol service.
Some customers routinely did not plan ahead or provide anything for us to keep the mail and newspapers in. They might even call us from their carphone after they had already left the house. They'd shrug it off and say, "well, keep our mail at your office, and bring it back when we return." But that's not allowed; I think there are postal regulations concerning it, not to mention the company's liability.
Newspapers were easy. Often the customer would tell us to "toss it." Meaning we had a guaranteed free Sunday paper from any patrol guy if we asked him ahead of time. Sometimes the customer wanted to keep the Sunday papers but for us to toss the others.
Most of the time the mail could be put in a plastic bag inside a backyard barbeque, or inside a doghouse, anyplace that's out of the weather. But if the customer came home and couldn't find where it had been put, they'd go orbital until we told them some of the likely places to look. Did they learn from this? Nope. Next time it was the same thing for them, don't plan or provide a thing.
But watch out for those long holiday weekends.
All bets are off. There are simply too many VC's to do, and too many other alarm or live patrol calls to attend to. The promise of three daily perimeter checks (PCs) becomes zero actual checks. The only ones that would get done were the ones that needed to have the newspaper or mail picked up, or for us to leave a card proving we'd been there. Most customers requesting only a PC or even some extra drivebys would not be told this, but they might only get one extra visit during the weekend. After all, they would never know.
Usually the one patrol visit they'd get would be on the morning of the day they're supposed to come home. Then the patrol guy would pick up all of the accumulated newspapers and stuff, so that the customer hopefully wouldn't know the papers had piled up every single day they had been gone.
The worst ones were clients who tried to get us to block a legal process server. The client called and complained that "there's some weirdo who keeps knocking on my door and won't go away; I want you to make him leave." (The client neglected to tell us that he knew who the alleged weirdo was and why he was there.) So the patrol got there, and found out the truth, and as long as the process server was staying within the law, there was nothing we could do. The client of course got extremely angry, threatened to get us fired, so forth and so on.
I was personally threatened by clients many times over the years. One of them promised me (on a Friday) that I wouldn't have a job come Monday after he talked to my boss. It's as if it were a magical incantation, "Eye No Yer Boss!" to try to make me shake with fear and comply immediately. Many clients were very abusive verbally (which is putting it mildly; it often felt like they'd reached down my throat and pulled out a few vital organs, all over the phone). I was required to remain polite, stay on the phone and take the verbal abuse. So, when you get any alarm company employees who sound pretty apathetic, that's probably why.
Now, alarms do require periodic maintenance. It also helps if someone actually uses it on a regular basis so that if something needs repair, they can find out, and call into the repair department and get it fixed.
So, all during the long weekend, the alarm just keeps going and going at irregular intervals. The neighbors want to kill someone, and many will call the alarm company and demand that someone come and shut it off. They can get pretty angry too.
And the client returns home, usually during one of the silent periods, disarms the system, and never knows a thing. Meanwhile the police have been out a number of times and might have even left a report slip or two. Do you know how much money the police charge for responding to too many false alarms? A LOT: up to $80 for more than two false alarm responses per year.
Some neighbors do the police and patrol a real favor by snooping around with a flashlight! Then they confidently call the alarm company to tell them that there's nothing going on! I'm sure the police are very thankful that someone else is taking the big risk of meeting up with a real burglar that way.
Yes, there are a number of real burglaries each month. But the vast majority are false alarms.
Now, many companies have 24 hour repair, but after-hours service costs a LOT more than a scheduled call during normal hours. Not only that, but the technician-on-call may be a while getting over to their house. Boy, the client just blows his top when he hears that! But it's only his fault for waiting until the last minute.
Then exercise your Second Amendment rights (while you still have them) and keep some firearms in your house. Take some safety training and shooting courses so you can handle them. Remember, "Gun Control" means being able to hit your target!
Failing that, if you feel you must get an alarm, then be sure to use the thing daily, and run a test on it at least once a month. Call your alarm company to find out how to run a test on it. Find the possible problems before the problems find you.
It is my opinion that they aren't much of an alarm company. They have to constantly assimilate other companies to keep up a supply of sheep... er, customers. They think it's cheaper that way, and it eliminates (at least temporarily) another competitor. But within a year after taking over a company, about half their acquired accounts cancel in disgust and go with someone else. Most people do not like being monitored from an out-of-state location; they would prefer that the actual alarm center be local to them.
I've spoken with representatives of some of their major competitors. They've told me that this company is the best advertising for them, because it's their biggest source of new customers!
In fact, I do not believe that providing alarm services is their real goal. I think they really want to just buy other alarm companies. They have a lot of sideline businesses, in the field of electric power utilities for instance.
If I have any advice for the proprietors of the many small Mom & Pop alarm companies, it would be this: Don't sell out to any big corporation no matter how much money they offer you. They need to keep expanding in this way, and they like it because you're not around after that either! But consider what happened to the former owners of the alarm company I worked at that was bought out in 1993. They got a lot of money from it (rumors said it was upward of $10 million, maybe much more), but being a local company serving a local client base, these guys couldn't go anywhere without meeting their own customers in person. "Why'd you sell out?" they'd hear. "You were running a good company!" They finally got very weary of it all. One of them took a long vacation and then vanished from public view; the other guy moved to another state.
If I ever started an alarm company (which I won't), a great name for it would be "The Old Alarm Company!" Because that's all we ever heard after being sold out: "The old alarm company used to be so much better!" It would probably attract all kinds of customers just from the name alone!
This huge alarm company has a major problem which has happened before. By taking over a series of small companies which used to have their own central station, and having the alarms all monitored from a huge center in one spot, it increases the chance of single-point failure. The chance that twenty alarm companies' central stations would all go out at once is very remote.
The chance that one huge central station can go out is very possible, and has happened. I was there and saw it. So, to keep a central station from shutting down due to a power outage isn't just desirable, it's critically necessary. And the more eggs that are in one basket, the more important it is that it never happen. Only, despite their generators and stuff, the computers and alarm receivers did go down for about 2 hours one night, and most of their customers in the Western U.S. never found out. As if it would have done much good if their alarms had gone off. We were ordered to not tell anyone that it happened. That's right, the official word was that we were to lie to the customers if they asked.
I wish I could feel safe enough to tell you who they are outright. Their press releases are hilarious! They sound like a broken record from the Borg, always mentioning how they are making progress assimilating other alarm companies. Their company statements claim they have strong growth, etc etc etc. Yet they lost about $49 million in 1997, and their stock has had poor performance even during the bull markets most companies enjoyed for the last few years. From mid 1996 to early 1997 it lost half its value [I wish I could take credit for that but I can't], and it is still hovering at about that same level. I'm sure glad I didn't buy any of it.
I discovered that an anagram for their company name comes out, interestingly enough, as "creep in, no toot!" Does that reveal something about how reliable their alarms might be?
The company is compartmentalized so few people know what's going on company-wide, and that's just the way they want it. The management is just a big series of cliques. I was only interested in doing my job, and would not play their office politics games. This made me unpopular, and so they got rid of me when they could do so.
I guess I was overqualified in certain things they did not want in their employees: honest, loyal, hard-working, dependable.
(And I can fully back up that statement. I never lied to a customer unless ordered to do so, and yes that happened quite a bit; I stayed with their company in the belief that things could be improved through application of effort; I gave them an honest 8 hours of work every day and put up with more garbage for it than I can believe now, looking back; and I was never late, and rarely missed work in the first place.)
My view is that they have rid themselves of the better people over the years. Those people they kept, they deserve; those who have decided to stay there, deserve to be there.
I'll give you an excellent example. A woman I'll just call "Mrs. R." got hired in the alarm center because she lived next door to one of the other dispatchers. She was one of the most non-courteous people I ever met. I listened to her talk to customers over the phone on many occasions, and never once did she ever, to my recollection, say the words "please" or "thank you" to anyone. (It's possible that she didn't even know those words.) Think of the most uncaring customer service person you ever saw, either in real life or on TV. This lady was the pattern.
She got a preferred shift on the day crew because of her connections with her friend who worked there. She actually stated once that she didn't care who the supervisors were, as she considered herself under this other guy's sole command. It's Clique City, folks.
Another thing: most company people at this place considered the swing and graveyard shifts as punishment jobs. They regarded the employees who worked on those shifts as sub-standard by definition, believing them to be unfit to work day shift, otherwise they wouldn't have been put on swing or graves in the first place. It was very hard to get moved up to day shift if you started at the place in the inferior shifts.
So one fine day, Mrs. R. decided she wanted to have a nap while on duty, and so she just leaned back in her chair against the wall and took a snooze in plain view of everyone. A mid level company supervisor saw this and got some feathers rumpled.
What happened from this incident was that Mrs. R. got moved out of the dispatch center. She was moved out to the front reception area (of all places to put her!), and Mrs R. got a raise besides! Nobody had to guess about the raise. Mrs. R. herself made sure everyone knew about it. That company deserves to have Mrs. R. in contact with the public and representing their firm.
The internal mismanagement is bound to collapse their company sooner or later. I will go out on a limb and predict now (March 1998) that they will be out of business, or swallowed by another company, by March 1999. I shall wait and see. Whether I continue this page after that remains to be seen. [See toward the end of this page for the latest developments.]
The above diatribe is largely my own considered opinion and does not apply to all such companies in all areas. Some in fact may be quality outfits. (Considering the amount of email I've received from steamed employees of such esteemed companies, I figure it's time to say that.)
WHY am I telling people all this? Informed people tend to make more intelligent decisions.
You don't have to take just my word for all of this!
Check out the article in SmartMoney magazine, November 1998,
pp 169-172. It is titled,
"Ten Things Your Home Security Firm Won't Tell You",
by Eric Herman.
It reiterates the same things I have been telling you here, and more.
Well, I stated above what I thought would happen to them by now. They are still around, still making the news now and then, but I believe they're on the ropes and certainly cannot continue the way they've been doing.
In December 1998 they issued a bunch of "unregistered notes" to raise capital. The press releases didn't go into too much detail on what the company planned to use the money for: pay down debt? facilities? certainly not pay-raises for the masses? (Naw, that's silly!) Besides, you can be sure that the company stated in the press release only what they wanted the press to report.
I noted this because it's a fact that companies about to pull bankruptcy often max out their credit to raise a bunch of cash, then go Chapter 11 and screw their creditors. I'm watching for it.
Also at that time they had a big shakeup in the upper management. They phrased it like it was a reorganization, but I noticed that the press release was written to try to play down the fact that their Chief Financial Officer walked out.
One month later, their new Chief Financial Officer also resigned!
And then in March, they ousted their CEO. The news release avoided giving details. Did he walk out or was he shoved out? Somehow, I get the feeling they didn't want to have to explain it.
The Los Angeles Times had an interesting article about them back in January 1999. It's good reading ...for once. Some analysts felt they paid too much for companies they bought out. (I never buy the Times myself, but somebody left this one at work and I happened to see it.)
Their stock price has now fallen into single-digit territory.
So we wait to see what else happens. This could be an interesting year.
Update: September 1999.
Right after I wrote that last update all hell started breaking loose
over there. They needed to restate their earnings or something and
their stock really sunk into the trash can after the shareholder
lawsuits started.
So in July their primary owners (a parent firm of sorts)
decided to bring in their own people to try to save the place.
I wish them luck (really, they'll need it).
The former president (whom we called Darth Vader behind his back
in the bad old days when I worked there) did enough damage;
he's still on as a "consultant" but I suspect
it's due to contract clauses; if they're smart they won't listen
to him too much from here on out.
Now they've had to divest themselves of some of their sideline businesses, and some of their merger plans with other places have fizzled. This is what I've been saying: they've had to do this to keep afloat; the end isn't far off, unless the new management can pull off a miracle. Here's a wave file with the current summary of their situation!
03/21/2000:
I'm not bothering to update this any more unless something really surprising
happens. They're walking dead right now and just don't know it.
Or maybe they do but they just won't close their doors.
12/4/2000. It's slowly coming up on 5 years since I got canned from that place. I think it's time to tell what they pulled on me. 5 years is quite some time, and it's likely, if not certain, that most or all of the culprits have moved on to other places. Nevertheless, I will use fictitious names here for them.
They canned me because I questioned their management, or rather their lack of management. Customers were allowed to treat us like dirt, constantly, so I complained to someone higher up. This got me branded as a complainer. I was dangerous because I had come from a company that got merged into theirs. I knew that things had been so much better under the old company's management. They did not want someone like me around.
One night in May 1996, a customer made a complaint that I wasn't doing my job. But I was doing my job; the patrol guy whom we sent to her house didn't do his. But I was the point of contact as far as the customer was concerned, so I was the one who she complained about.
That was what they were waiting for. The supervisor, whom I'll call "Mr. Bandini" (because he was so full of it his eyes were brown) told me I was now on "indefinite suspension without pay" and was not to return to work until further notice. "Mr. Bandini" also hinted that they had records of other customer complaints about me, as well as employee complaints. (I know how that worked. They'd circulated a petition among those they knew would not be friendly towards me. They had done it before with other employees.) No matter what, I was out of there.
The clincher: "Until further notice" means "never", especially if they can avoid talking to me or allow me to see them. That's what they did. They ignored my phone calls and visits at their offices. They did not return any of my calls. The responsible parties were conveniently not in whenever I called.
So I filed for unemployment compensation with the state EDD. My ex-employers countered that with, "We didn't fire him, he QUIT." So my claim was denied.
I filed a written protest. I had a letter from the company's Human Resources department saying that THEY had terminated my employment, and that I was actually eligible for rehire (yeah right).
A hearing date was set for late October 1996. Meanwhile, my ex-employers did their best to bad-mouth me to anyone who called them regarding job applications. I know this because I tested them on several occasions. So I went to a lawyer to see what I could do about that. I learned that it would cost me hundreds of dollars to bring suit against them, and all for what? My old job back? I hardly thought so.
The hearing date came. I figured at the very least that someone from that company would have to take a couple of hours out of their day to attend and present their side of the story.
When I arrived, I learned that they weren't coming. EDD had received a fax from them saying "We will not contest this action." Got them! They KNEW they were full of crap, and had decided to back down.
The hearing judge had me give my side of the story anyway, and I got to show him all of my documents and letters. He ultimately ruled in my favor and I got about 4 months of back unemployment as a result.
But my former employers weren't through with me yet.
I had some $1900 in the company 401(k) retirement plan. Since this was under $5000 I was required to do a rollover or take the money directly. I filled out the proper forms for an IRA transfer and sent them in to them. Nothing happened. The end of the year came and they told me I had to make a choice about the disposition of those funds. I re-submitted the forms to them. The forms were for a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer into an IRA account at a credit union.
They sent me a 1099 tax statement that was completely falsified. The form stated that I'd been paid the money and had taxes and penalties withheld! That was NOT supposed to be how it was handled, and anyway even if they HAD done that, I sure hadn't got any check from them or anything. Neither had the credit union.
I spoke several times to the person at the company in charge of payroll and accounting. I'll call her "Cindy Wilson" (which is not her real name). "Cindy" took a "who cares about you" attitude toward me and would not answer my inquiries.
The whole thing smacked of gross incompetence at their accounting department, or intentional acts with intent to defraud. (Either should be a capital offense as far as I'm concerned.)
So, I contacted the Internal Revenue Service!
They told me what I needed to do. I needed to phone them yet again and tell them that they need to correct these problems, do the direct IRA rollover like they were supposed to, and send me a correct 1099 form. I told the IRS that phone calls don't hold any weight with this place. They told me they'd send a letter to them too.
I waited 2 days, long enough for the IRS letter to make its way to their offices. Then I called them (on their own 800 number) and requested "Cindy's" extension.
She was her usual indifferent self as I explained once more who I was and what it was about. Suddenly she needed to put me on hold. I was left on hold for two minutes or so. When she came back her whole manner changed. She was super friendly and anxious to get this unfortunate problem completely taken care of!
(My guess is that someone waved to her and said, "Is that David Bartholomew you have on their now? Well, according to this letter, he really DID call the IRS! We've got to fix this NOW!" They started moving, probably in more ways than one!)
48 hours later it was completely taken care of. I had a proper 1099 form, and the funds were transferred to the credit union. I have not heard from them ever since.
They definitely did not want the IRS examining their books. From the way they went through CEO's and CFO's since then, I'm probably not too far off the mark.
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