There ought to be a law/protect the elderly

I hate to add any new laws. We have so many.
But when it comes to children and the elderly, we need to protect them.
Even those who don’t think they need it.

In this day and age, those over 70 are younger than those of that age,
20 years ago or more. But they are still being taken advantage.

The newest scam or heavily push from salesmen are the security systems.
All of us have seen the ad…”I have fallen down and I can’t get up.
But now the sales people are even more aggressive, playing on that insecurity
of those over 60 and really on those over 70 and 80.

One resident was talked into a system, even though she already had the
necklace that alerted the closest neighbor and family.

The selling point, as she was declining the offer? “well, I have been here for 2 hours
and no one has called you. So who would help you? Well, let her push that button and
he would see all kinds of calls. The next part was, “but this system of mine will also
protect you outside. (being she fell outside 2 years before, this gave her great thought).
And then the closing argument was, well, what if you have a fire here. Who is going
to help you? Our system will call for help for you. And we also have protection against
intruders. A neighbor had been robbed several years ago, so she let down her guard and said
Yes.

Next came the set up. They showed up on her doorstep to install the system. But she
said, I can’t do it today, I am packing to go on a trip. They told her, they had to do it that
day, as they were only in the Sandpoint are this one day. After 8 hours, the system was
in and she had no clue how to operated it. There was no notifying the family. Of
which 2 of them lived on the property and another lived about a mile away.

In October there was an incident over boiled eggs. And no one was home.
Since then the Alarm blinks over and over “Fire, smoke in Living Room”
since October. No call, no reset, and when family called there wasn’t any
satifaction in their answers. Still no one came out to test the system
and no one knows how to reset it, as it doesn’t have a reset button.

My question is… is the system working? If there were to be an intruder,
would it contact someone? Who? The police? Surely not the family, even
though they live on the property. If there were a fire, surely it isn’t going to
work with it blinking, smoke in the living room since October.
Does the fall alarm work? And who would it call.
At least the old system had numbers of family and neighbors.
So much for 24 hour, two way voice and verified monitoring.

Their only prep work was reading the instructions to an 87 year old
woman who was worried about packing for her trip to Chicago.
that was leaving the next morning.

There should be a law, that the company has to have a family member
or a neighbor with the person while the sales person is explaining the
system to them. And if that elderly person decides to buy into it,
then that person should be there to explain how to run the system,
so both of them understand it.

While the woman didn’t have anyone calling her in those two hours,
the sales person would have been told, that she had two people who
live there, check in at 7am just before they left for work. That she got
another call from the daughter, who lived a mile away and a call from
a son who lived 300 miles away. Every day… and those same two who
live there check with her at 4 pm. She had an alarm that worked very
well, incase she fell. That alarm was back with several phone numbers
to call. This one doesn’t seem to be, as no one is called about the smoke
in the living room still.

There ought to be a law…