[legion]

Doorbell rings at 7:30 p.m. or so. My wife answers it…she's gone 5 minutes. I go upstairs to check what's going on. A guy in an ADT polo shirt is trying to talk her into letting him install a free security system…the catch is that we have to let them put a large ADT sign in the front yard presumably for advertising. As soon as I show up, he says "Is that a sliding door you have in the back of your house?" Maybe that's his lead-in to hard-sell mode. I tell him we're not interested. He leaves.

Being from the Chicago area, this is a common scam. A criminal claims to be installing free security systems…they need to examine the house (take measurements, count windows, etc.) and will come back tomorrow and do the install. What they are really doing is casing the house for a future robbery. The proud sign in the front is to mark the house…and to make the neighbors ignore when they show up in ADT uniforms moving large (empty) cases of equipment into the house and later moving those same cases (now full of your stuff) back out of the house when the install in presumably done. After you agree to having the system installed, they will tell you that they are available for an install tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. They hope your response is: "That won't work, I'll be at work until 3:00 tomorrow." (Now they have a time they know you won't be home.)

So I call the police, then I call ADT's corporate headquarters. The PD tells me they will check it out. ADT tells me that it is probably a dealer, and the "free" system usually comes with an inflated monthly fee. (Which you pay to the dealer instead of ADT. The dealer then pays your actual, lower monthly fee to ADT and keeps the difference.)

About three minutes later, a PD car drives down my street and stops the guy. They have a 30-second talk and he's back to going door-to-door. I guess he was legit. Oh well, better safe than sorry (and robbed).