On Friday, I got a sudden unexpected phone call.
“Hi this is <name> from Colorado Springs Utilities. Are you the owner?”
I immediately thought this was about the replacement sod their contractor had installed on our front lawn a couple of weeks ago, where the other contractors had had to dig up in order to put in the new neighborhood fiber optic cable for faster internet. It had been trashy looking for some four months already, and I was glad to see the new sod being installed.
“Yes”, I said.
“Your payment for your electricity bill is overdue and your electricity will be cut off in 30 minutes unless you pay immediately."
OK, big alarm bells. For a kick-off, CSU also charges for water and gas, not just electricity. There’s no way I could not just pay my “electricity bill”. Besides which, I pay our utilities bill at the beginning of the month along with a couple of other bills. OK, yes, I could have forgotten, after all Friday was the 16th of the month.
Nevertheless, this just had all the vibes of a scam call. If I didn’t pay right now I’d have no electricity. I couldn’t even imagine CSU blackmailing users like that.
“Let me log in to the site to check. I might have inadvertently forgotten, but I can pay there immediately.”
The caller then started into a spiel about they’d have to send out a technician to reconnect the electricity if I didn’t pay up, but I just put the phone down, logged into the CSU site where it said I’d paid my bill on at 6th. They must have been desperate because they phoned back, to no avail.
“I’ve paid, bye.”
I also phoned up CSU directly and warned them about the scam call and provided them with the caller number: (719) 716-2885.
Continuing the scam theme, onto emails. Perhaps once a week I’ll get an email to one of my personal accounts that starts off with:
Julian, We are excited to inform you that Julian M Bucknall has been awarded a business credit facility of $328,400. This offer comes as a result of the outstanding financial performance of your company, evidenced by a 10-point increase in your commercial credit rating.
Yeah, right. “Julian M Bucknall” is a well-known commercial company with a great credit rating.
Playing: Sadeness (part 1) by Enigma. I just love the classical choir in the background and the medieval feel to it.
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1 Response
#1 Virgo Pärna said...
21-Aug-24 8:22 AMHere in Estonia scammers caller-id is known to be fake... Supposedly they are able supply their own caller-id. So here reporting that is mostly useless.
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