Utah’s economy continues to outpace the United States, though we’re losing ground on key economic indicators, we’re losing that ground more slowly than the nation as a whole and many states around the country.

September 2008 Unemployment Rate Utah VS. USA Click for latest employment situation report
Utah: 3.5%	U.S.: 6.1%
Year-Over Nonfarm Growth
Utah: 0.1%	U.S.: -0.4%

With economists and pundits expecting the worst Christmas shopping season in a generation.  Like Alisa Roth with Marketplace says it, “It’s hard to believe. But it looks like Americans may have quit shopping. Retail sales fell nearly 3 percent in October. And that’s the biggest drop since the Commerce Department started keeping track back in 1992.”

Things aren’t getting nicer, either:

Jerry Yang at Yahoo! calls it quits, meanwhile Republicans appear to be pushing Detroit off the cliff they’re facing.

How is the economy and recession (which Jeff Thredgold estimates began nearly a year ago) affecting YOU, personally?

What have you changed about your lifestyle? No-longer online window shopping? Stricter budgeting? Only perusing certain aisles at the grocery store? Job change? Changes in retirement goals?

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS. What’s happening out there?

Here’s the latest list (below), from the February 4, 2008 edition.  Find the full Fortune 100 list online.

It’s worth noting that eBay is the only company listed on the Fortune 100 that is in Utah.

Notes:
N.A.: Not available. U.S. employees includes part-timers as of time of survey. Job growth, new jobs, and voluntary turnover are full-time only. Revenues are for 2006 or latest fiscal year. All data based on U.S. employees.
* Average annual pay: yearly pay rate plus additional cash compensation for the largest classification of full-time salaried and hourly employees.

Local tech company Bungee Labs is hosting a FREE showing of Batman the Dark Knight this afternoon at 4:00pm. (I interviewed @ReverendTed from Bungee last Friday on the Couchcast)

We believe Utah is home to many amazing companies…and we want to get to
know more of you.

Bring your family or friends and join us this Tuesday, July 22nd, for the
4:00pm show of Batman the Dark Knight at the Jordan Commons Megaplex.

Seating is limited. Reserve your tickets (up to 4) here:
http://www.bungeeconnect.com/movie/batman

Show information
Tuesday July 22nd, 4:00pm

Theater Address
Jordan Commons | 9400 S State St, Sandy | map: http://snipurl.com/2sx47

Let me know if you need more tickets of if you have any questions.

This is an awesome gift to the community from Bungee Labs! Check out more about Bungee Labs by watching a short video (2:27) about the applications you can build with Bungee Connect.

Mozy, a very cool/hot tech company in Utah, is hosting a BIG SHIN-DIG on Friday night this week… and to make enough room, they rented out the entire

HARD ROCK CAFE, SLC
505 S 600 E
Salt Lake City, UT 84102

Get Directions(801) 532-7625 (Google Map)

RSVP on Facebook, if you like… or just show up ready to geek out and party

Details:

When: Friday, May 2nd, 2008 from 7:00-9:00 PM
(Don’t worry though, no one’s going to kick you out at 9:01)
What’s happening: Food and prizes, including: a MacBook Air, an iPhone, an iPod Touch and multiple iTunes gift cards (employees are eligible to win these prizes), entertainment by “Dueling Pianos Anywhere” Come for a minute or come for hours – just make sure you come, cause it’ll be worth one of your Friday nights!

I hope this blog post gets to the very top of the search engines for the terms “APX Alarm” or “APEX ALARM“. Please help? Furthermore, please remember that this is my blog, and not representative of any other entity.

Its TOO BAD that there are so many “APEX ALARM” companies in the country that none of them want to take ownership for the other APEX/APX’s underhanded dealings. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are all divisions of the same company, and they have become pros at the “name-and-blame game”. I do know, from local PR blogger Russ Page that APX knows how to spin a problem into something beneficial for themselves (see my comment here, and the other comments on Russ’ original blog post here)

Suffice it to say, I am referring below to the:

APX ALARM SECURITY SOLUTIONS, INC. of Provo, Utah. Utah EID 6047238-0142, License: UT # 6093322-6501

More than a year ago, services were installed in my home to “protect” me and my assets from thievery, damage, or the always-intangible “violation of privacy”.

Turns out, after about 6 months of service payments, we discovered the service didn’t actually work, when one of the kids set off the alarm and we didn’t get it turned off before it was supposed to call 911 for us or to the monitoring service.

I called APEX ALARM, repeatedly, and demanded something fairly simple:

• Fix my system
• Credit my account the 6-months of payments I had made under the false impression the system works.

Apex Alarm told me they would check on doing that, and they’d get back to me.

1. Four months went by, and I was greeted with a collection call in early December 2006 because we had “not paid our service”.
2. On December 5th, 2006, I went to their office in the Riverwoods in Provo and sat in their waiting area for more than an hour waiting for “someone who could absolutely fix my problem once and for all” to come talk to me. Nobody did. I would have stayed all day long if I was willing to sacrifice my job for the matter.
3. The next day, I sent a letter to APX Alarm requesting that they work with me on the matter. See a copy of the letter I sent, here.
4. On January 17, 2007, I spoke to Brady, 888-346-9202 extension 2004, agent ID 5403, who explained to me that:
   1. They would credit my account the past-due amount from before my problem was discovered, but that “company policy for credits is that payment has to be in full first, then 4 months payment due $171.96.”
   2. My reply to him was to the effect that I would agree to that if I had a document signed by a company officer stating that if I paid the previous four months of past-due service, then they would indeed both (a) Fix my service and (b) backtrack and credit my account in full for all previous months of service from before I initially called to explain the problem.
   3. He told me he would have to get approval, and that person was out of the office, and we arranged a call the next day, Jan 18th 2007, wherein I was told that “the company” would not guarantee me in writing what Brady was promising me over the phone, but that if I trusted them, they would follow-through on their word. I replied that it didn’t make sense that they wouldn’t simply document what they promised to me, and I wanted Brady to try again, which he said he would do and get back to me.

Nothing was heard for months.

Now, a collection agency, Anderson, Crenshaw And Associates, full of loudmouths and bullys, which calls from the number 866-400-3550 (See Rip-Off Report “Anderson, Crenshaw And Associates rude, abnoxious, unhelpful idiots, ripoff Dallas Texas“), calls me regularly demanding payment for services I have never received. I am clearly not the only one who feels this way about them. In fact, one of the earlier agents who verbally belittled me over the phone claimed that his company, Anderson, Crenshaw And Associates, simply buys debts from companies like APX Alarm and chases down payment like bulldogs hoping to get something out of people like me. They, too, don’t really care. They just want the money.

My phone call with Anderson, Crenshaw And Associates just now ended like this:

Me: I have been trying to ask APX Alarm to help me with this.
Them: They don’t want to help you. You’re in default.
Me: What am I in default of? They haven’t provided me any service?
Them: It doesn’t matter. You signed a contract saying you would pay the bill no matter if your service worked or not.
Me: “Would you sign a contract like that?”
Them: No way. “There is no way in hell I would ever sign a contract like that.”
Me: Then why do you think I should pay it?
Them: Because you signed the contract.

Before the call was over, I was threatened with a lawsuit and, from what I understand from the person I talked to, he said Apx Alarm was going to try and TAKE MY HOUSE if I didn’t pay up. What!!?

Well, I related to the collection agent, who I am sure has a beautiful, modest home and lives a simple, good value-driven American life, that I had previously asked Apex Alarm for help, and they said they would.

In all my dealings with this matter, I have related that I:

• Am COMPLETELY WILLING to pay the absolute complete amount for any and all service actually provided.
• And that I am waiting for APEX ALARM to come through on what they promised to ME (a) to provide service and (b) to fix the problem I had with NO service, plus credit my account for time lost in having no service performed.

The horrific part of the story is that I did get myself into one of the most litigious and vicious contracts I have EVER SEEN. The simple facts of the matter is that APEX ALARM has no reason to care about me, my needs, me as a customer or me as a human being (which, if you miss the irony here, is odd because their whole sales pitch is that I should use their service to protect things I value in life)

They just want my money.

Other than the required “did you get setup” calls that were made on day one or right after that, I have never received a “how’s it going” call or a “we appreciate your business” postcard or a “we did a check on your property and (gosh) we noticed we’ve been billing you for nothing at all, so we’d like to credit you back a month of service and come fix your system!” call.

Nope.

I didn’t even receive a call from them when I should have! (when my alarm went off! That’s how I found out it was broken)

If you’re still reading, the take away here is that:

• Apx Alarm’s sales agents were invited into my home by my wife (WHILE I WAS NOT HOME) who begged for her help, and she was sold on their charming manner and promise to install a bunch of free services and gadgets for us.
  • They said they were “in trouble” if the didn’t get one more unit installed that very night, and that they might lose their jobs.
  • They told us they were looking for someone to give a deal to, so that others in the area would see them as a good company (they gave us a free sign for our yard — yay).
  • They told us there was “a lot of stuff in the contract” but it all really meant that APX would take care of us, and that anything that ever went wrong, they (the sales guys) would personally fix it for us.
    • Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t really believe them either, but looking back it was obviously part of their tactic to help me not worry about it, sign the dotted line, and worry about the “fine print” later.
• As a rule, I never, ever, ever buy anything door-to-door (except certain well-known cookies) and would NOT have done this, other than that my wife was so impressed with the service and convinced me it was OK.
• I know SOMEONE at APX ALARM SECURITY SOLUTIONS received my request to fix my problem.
• SOMEONE at APX (maybe the same person or someone else) actively or passively decided NOT TO respond to my request and, instead, put my account into default.
• From the moment the sales guys left my door, I have felt abandoned and finally now abused by APX ALARM SECURITY SOLUTIONS

The summary of this is clear: I am asking APX to violate the contract I (was led to/convinced to) signed. Yes. They don’t legally HAVE TO do anything about it.

But do they morally have an obligation to??

Today as I write this, I am angry and befuddled knowing that my SECURITY ALARM COMPANY has resorted to bullying collection agencies and underhanded, litigious contracts to make money, and the thread of lawsuit and loss of personal property. The reason I turned to them is to PROTECT myself from unseen and unknown dangerous predators who would want to violate my privacy, my lifestyle, and encroach upon my personal property and assets.

YOU, Apex Alarm, are the greatest THREAT to that very security you pretended to care about.

Dear APX ALARM. I doubt you really care about all this, but this blog post will stay here until this matter is resolved. Your legal agreements may be legally binding, but I believe that Google, and BASIC BUSINESS ETHICS will prove more powerful.

While I was there, I presented some information to a great group of people about who SOS Technical (my employer) is, and what our services are. I felt it would be good to archive this information for others to have, so I’ve uploaded my presentation in PDF and PowerPoint format for your viewing and sharing pleasure.

Below is a map of the current locations of SOS Staffing’s family of companies (including 8 strictly “SOS Technical” location)

(Please note that SOS Technical, its other divisions or parents, assumes no responsibility for this blog or any of its content)