Can a company renew a 5 year contract without consent from or notice of renewal to the consumer?
Question Details: My boyfriend had a contract for alarm monitoring with a local company. He informed them at the end of his 5 year contract that he had no desire to renew via phone call. He did not receive any notice of renewal or cancellation nor did he receive any invoices for the next 6 months, then after 6 months he received a statement showing that he was past due for the last 6 months. Do they have the right to do this?
Whether or not the alarm company could renew in this situation depends entirely on what the contract had said. It is legal for a contract to provide that it will renew on expiration unless the other party provides notice in a certain way, in a certain time frame. If there was a clause like that and your boyfriend did not obey the terms of the contract, then it may be that it legally renewed--in that case, he had in advance given his consent to renewal unless he stated he was not renewing in the proper way. Other than that, though, a contract should not renew without his explicit consent. He should therefore review the original contract to see what it said about renewal and cancellation.
