About a month and a half ago, I got an email from National Grid telling me that my service would be shut down, and I'd be fined, if I didn't provide access to the gas connections here. I called National Grid thinking this was a scam, but in reality, it was National Grid. I told the woman that I live in an apartment building that is part of a bigger complex, and none of us have access to the room where those connections are, that they are locked, and we don't have keys. She said it didn't matter, that I, and every tenant in this building was responsible to make sure the landlord knows they needed access. I asked her why they didn't have any contact information for the landlord of the apartment complex, since they run electric in the halls of each building, and provide the hot water to the buildings from a boiler in the basement of each building that were obviously run on natural gas. The Landlord has to get a bill from them. She insisted it was my duty to call the Landlord's office. I told her that it was ludicrous that they expected a tenant to do the job that National Grid was supposed to be doing. I did call my Landlord, and asked her if she'd received anything from National Grid. She said no, but that another tenant had shown her an email from National Grid, and she thought it was a scam (as I did). She did call them, and set up an appointment, and the heat had to be shut off for several hours that day in very cold weather. I had also called New York State's Public Service Commission, but they could have cared less about it. I abruptly hung up when she said there wasn't anything she could do about it.
Yikes - at least in Florida the people doing the scams are scammers and not government and/or utility employees...