Homer Electric Association is reminding members regarding suspicious phone calls that they don’t demand payment by certain method or threaten an immediate disconnection of service if payment is not received. This comes following reports that members are receiving calls from scammers impersonating Homer Electric Association and threatening to shut off power if funds aren’t received.
Keriann Baker, Director of Member Relations, told KSRM to not give any personal information to the caller:
“What we’re seeing is a group of scammers calling and sometimes it’ll even make the phone call look as if it’s coming from us and demanding payments within 30 minutes and if you don’t pay within 30 minutes your power is going to get automatically shut off. Of course, we don’t shut off power in that manner. We have a whole process and a system that we are legally required to go through. We will never demand payment within 30 minutes otherwise we’re shutting of your power. It’s not what we do. We’re very regulated and we have a set process. Whenever we do something like that, there’ll be plenty of notice and people will get phone calls from us. The way that we look at it is definitely don’t do that over the phone, but if you have questions hang up. Don’t call them and dial indirectly. Don’t hit that last number. If you have question like that, that’s one way to kind of protect yourself from this kind of scam, but if we shutoff your power, you’re going to get a written notice. You’re going to get a tag on your door. There’s going to be a period of time for you to be able to get money and we work with people. We try and send them to Love INC. We try to send them to other places if they’re struggling. That’s not our process at all.”
HEA says that scammers are becoming smarter, saying to not be fooled by caller ID even if it says ‘Homer Electric Association.’
Baker said:
“They’ll find a way where they can change the email and unless you hit that button down to actually look at the email and realize it’s not who it’s coming from, I’ve gotten calls asking me to get gift cards to get my boss out of jail. There’s a tone to it. you’ve got to really look at the tone. We set up, on our personal emails, a big yellow banner at the top of each email that will tell us ‘this email originated outside of HEA’. We did that because not only are our members being targeted, as these scammers get more sophisticated, but they are also targeting the utilities themselves. This is absolutely not limited to HEA.”
If you have questions or need additional information, call 1-800-478-8551.