KEY POINTS:
An elderly Auckland woman was shocked to return home from a holiday to find an urgent notice from her security company saying a burglar had been seen leaving her property with valuable items.
Worried and unable to find the point of entry, she rang her alarm company only to find the notice, which had a heading saying 'Your alarm has been activated', was in fact a sales promotion.
"I really think it's an appalling thing to do ... I'm not stupid but I thought I had been broken into. [The notice had information] right down into the hours that the burglar had been seen leaving."
The woman, who did not want to be identified, said she was going through her mail on Tuesday when she found the "urgent notice" from Matrix Security.
Inside the flap with the burglary details was information about Matrix's quick response times to an intrusion and a VIP card offering free connections of existing alarm systems and discounts on new alarms.
"I had been away for four days and was opening my mail and saw that and thought 'I've been robbed'. That was my first thought."
"I got panicky and rang them. [In] 10 minutes [the manager] rang me and said 'oh, I'm amazed you didn't know that was a self promotion'. I said 'no and I consider it in very bad taste'."
Matrix Security chief executive Scott Carter said the notices were sent to 1500 of the company's existing customers and offered additional monitoring services.
He was surprised anyone would take them as a genuine notification as it is not the way "any security firm" would advise a person about a burglary.
"It would be far fetched to suggest that - however, if some people did take it literally, then we'd have to take that into account [for future campaigns]."
Mr Carter said the company had received a few queries from customers about whether they really had been burgled. He apologised for any distress caused.
"It's not what we intended to do. If anybody has taken it literally and it has bothered them, absolutely we apologise. It is not as though we set out deliberately to upset anybody."
Police have criticised the company's marketing approach saying it was misleading and inappropriate.
"There are certainly more appropriate ways of drumming up business," said Detective Inspector Bruce Shadbolt, head of Auckland City's CIB.
The Advertising Standards Code of Ethics states "no advertising should be misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive the consumer".
A spokeswoman for the Advertising Standards Authority said it would investigate the advertisement if a complaint was received.
