Pathetic Scam Caller Audio

One of the other scams going around lately is the “utility slammers”. I dropped the land line years ago but occasionally get calls on my cell phone. I never answer any call from a number I do not recognize. If they don’t leave a message, I know it was a spam call and even sometimes when they do, but then I just delete the message and block the number.

Any way the utility scammers, who will also sometimes come to your door as happened to me last year, claim they are from your “utility” company and tell you there is a problem with your billing, that you might be being overcharged, that they need to see your utility bill for some BS reason, or if calling, that you need to get a copy of your utility bill.

What they do is get your gas or electric account number and use that along with your address to switch you to another gas or electric supplier, often at a much increased cost and without your knowledge.

I’ve been getting a lot of these calls lately and they leave a message that goes something like, “I need to talk to you about an urgent matter regarding your utility bill, you must call me back before the end of the day so we can clear this matter up, and have a copy of your electric bill in front of you.” Yea, sure I will… /s

The guy who came to my door last year was wearing coveralls that had some sort of official looking ID pinned on it that had a logo on it that looked vaguely like MetEd but wasn’t and he claimed to be “from your utility company” and said, “I need to see your electric bill because there is a problem with it.”

I asked him 3 times what company he was actually from and he finally mumbled something like “Utico” “Unicom”?

I told him to get the hell out of the apartment building, pointed out that there were signs posted regarding no solicitation and that I was calling the police as he was misrepresenting himself. And he left and I even followed him to make sure he got back in his car and drove off.

I knew it was a scam right off but I had some elderly neighbors and some neighbors for whom English was not their first language, and I was concerned that they might be vulnerable to the scam.

I hate scammers!

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