Saturday, October 6, 2007

Scam warning

Yesterday, I received three phone calls on my husband's phone. The person said they were with our electric supplier, and that our account with them had been switched, and would we like to authorize them to switch it back?

The name of the company (I can't remember what they said it was, IDT or something) was NOT National Grid. It's one of those little companies that cropped up after National Grid/NiMo was supposed to allow competition, you know, the ones that buy the power from National Grid and then sell it to you at a lower price--for the first three months or so, then jack it up, anyway.

The problem with this was that we did not switch over to any of those companies. Ever. When I asked the person, "Have we done business with you in the past?" she replied, "Oh yes, I can read you the account number right now, if you want."

That was an outright LIE. She claimed to be our supplier until a month ago. That's just not true: We never went through a middleman; we have been with NiMo/National Grid this whole time. This person was lying to me and trying to trick me into becoming a customer by claiming we already were a customer. I'm going to get the number from Brian's phone and look it up, and maybe report them to the BBB and attorney general. While I am skeptical enough to see through that crap, a lot of people aren't, especially older people.

So, if you get a similar call, be aware that they have no qualms about lying to you in order to get you to sign up!

2 comments:

joy said...

Yuck! That kind of stuff is so frustrating. After living with and hearing about addicts and their money-stealing antics, I have such little patience anymore about folks stealing from other folks.

Lynda Lehmann said...

As one of the millions of artists who are constantly subject to scams of all sorts, I've become more vigilant. And believe me, I was plenty vigilant before that. Seems like the line of would-be scammers stretches around the world. It's a good thing MOST people are for the most part, honest and decent.