大象传媒

Now if you鈥檙e buying a burglar alarm, what could be more re-assuring than the idea that a security guard will rush to your to door to check you鈥檙e okay the moment it goes off?

听

That was the promise made to customers of Preferred Security UK Ltd, an alarm firm in Cardiff.

听

Annette Taylor from Newport received a call out of the blue from them last September. Not only were they pushing their manguard service, but the company was also offering the alarm system free of charge, with installation for just 拢99 instead of 拢499.

听

But when the salesman visited her, the price rocketed to 拢3,000 for the alarm, servicing and five years' monitoring 鈥� to be done by a separate company.

听

When Annette said that was too much, the cost suddenly came down to 拢900, plus 拢100 a month for a year, so she signed on the dotted line.

听

Annette said: 鈥淲e would be monitored with a monitoring company and there would be a manguard service so that if the alarm went off and they could not get a response from either ourselves or our keyholders then the manguard would come.鈥�

听

But just a few weeks later Annette discovered the deal might not be as good as she first thought.

听

Mysterious charges appeared on her telephone bill. She later found out these were automatic calls from her alarm to the monitoring centre, although she says Preferred Security never warned her about them.

听

More worrying were the problems with the alarm itself.

听

Annette said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 gone off several times. We鈥檝e had no response. No manguard. We鈥檝e got no proof of this manguard. No one seems to know what company it is or where they鈥檙e based, so as far as we鈥檙e concerned we haven鈥檛 got manguard cover.鈥�

听

And Annette isn鈥檛 the only one who鈥檚 contacted X-Ray with concerns.

听

In Bridgend, Donald Cole paid 拢2,000 to Preferred Security for his system in March.

听

Like Annette, he says he wasn鈥檛 warned about those extra charges on his phone bill for calls to the monitoring centre. He said: 鈥淚t was only about 23p a time, but there was quite a lot of them. They mount up.鈥�

听

The big selling point for Donald was the manguard service, but he says the first time his alarm did go off there was no sign of a manguard.

听

So X-Ray decided to test both Annette鈥檚 and Donald鈥檚 alarms, letting each one ring for half an hour. On both occasions there was no response from any guard.

听

Preferred Security鈥檚 website makes a lot of big claims, including that they鈥檙e one of the 鈥渇ew companies in the UK that offer both police and Manguard response.鈥�

听

Now some alarm companies do have the correct approval to get a police response to your home, but Preferred Security isn鈥檛 one of them.

听

The current management of Preferred Security UK Ltd insist their manguarding service does exist.

听

They say the reason Annette didn鈥檛 have a manguard turn up was that she鈥檇 cancelled her contract with them, although that was news to her.

听

But they do admit there have been some problems, and they changed the company they used to provide the service in November.

听

As for their promise of a police response in an emergency too, their explanation for that is that the manguard could call the police. The company have now promised to give both Annette and Donald their money back.

Are you baffled by so-called bargains when you do your weekly shop?

听

Last year the听decided to do something about it and asked all the major supermarket chains to work together to make their offers more meaningful and fair for shoppers.

听

A set of voluntary principles were drawn up and one of the main commitments was that supermarkets wouldn鈥檛 sell something at a lower discounted rate for longer than it had already been at its higher, original price.

听

Eight of the supermarkets agreed to sign up, including two of the biggest players, Sainsbury鈥檚 and Tesco. However, Asda declined, saying it thought the principles would encourage yo-yo pricing.

听

The principles were adopted at the end of last November, so X-Ray left it a few months and decided to test out how well they were being followed.

听

We enlisted the help of independent pricing website mysupermarket.com, gave them 60 typical products you would find in the average shopping trolley and asked them to monitor their prices at Tesco, Sainsbury鈥檚 and Asda for three months, between 1st February and 30th April.

听

Check out tonight鈥檚 programme to see how well they all did, or if you miss it catch it on for the next seven days.

听

And don't miss about how a group of cheerleaders helped X-Ray to tell the story.