EXELON CORPORATION While scams occur throughout the year, the company sees an increase in scam reports during the holiday season. Additionally, imposters are taking advantage of the economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and pressuring families and businesses who may be struggling with past-due balances.
This year, BGE is partnering with the
"Utilities United Against Scams Day continues to be very important opportunity for BGE to reach out to our customers," said
"Scam artists are using the threat of electric or gas service termination to trick customers into giving them money over the phone," said
Currently, the most prevalent scam calls are robo-calls where customers are asked to "press 1" to hear about their bill and make a payment. Once the number 1 is pressed, a live person gets on the line and demands immediate payment or personal information.
BGE is also aware of calls where scammers claim, "Your meter needs to be switched out immediately or your power will be turned off." These claims are followed by a demand for immediate payment using Cashapp, Bitcoin, Zelle or Green Dot with some of those calls end with the scammers texting a barcode to the customer for immediate payment. As a reminder, utilities will never send a single notification to a customer within one hour of a service interruption, and they never will ask customers to make payments with pre-paid debit or gift cards, or any form of cryptocurrency.
Here are some tips to help identify scams
1. BGE will never come to a customer's home or business to:
Demand a payment.
Ask for immediate payment with a prepaid cash card.
Ask for their BGE account number or other personal information, such as a driver's license number.
2. BGE will never call a customer to:
Ask for their account number.
Ask for personal information such as their
Ask them to make a direct payment with a prepaid cash card.
3. To identify an actual BGE employee, remember:
All BGE field employees wear clothing with the BGE logo, including shirt and safety vest.
BGE employees and contractors visibly display a company ID badge with the BGE logo, employee's name, and photo.
If any customer is unsure whether a visitor or caller is a BGE employee or believes he or she has been a target or victim of a scam, call 1-800-685-0123 immediately. To learn more, visit bge.com/MyAccount.
Tips for business customers
BGE and the PSC are also seeing an increase in energy-related scam attempts targeting businesses. Offenders impersonate the names of BGE and other trusted organizations in email or other communications. Their intention is to deceive businesses into providing personal and financial information or acting on urgent requests for payment.
To help protect a business from cyber-scams:
Carefully review emails originating from outside your organization's network.
Check the name of the sender and business and make sure it matches the name and business in the email address. Look for misspellings or slight alterations.
Make a call to verify the email was sent from a trusted source. Use a phone number from the business' records or the sender's official website and not the number provided in the email.
Confirm that everything looks legitimate especially when a request can have major effects for your company, such as transferring large amounts of money.
Hover over website links before clicking to confirm the legitimacy of the site.
Bill-payment assistance to help customers and avoid scam attempts
BGE understands that COVID-19 continues to create economic hardship for many of our customers and is offering a number of bill-payment assistance programs, including flexible payment options, financial assistance for past-due balances and usage alerts for current bills. Any customer who is experiencing a hardship or difficulty with their bill should call BGE immediately at 1-800-685-0123 to learn more about our payment plans and programs. For more information, visit bge.com/MyAccount.
###
BGE, founded in 1816 as the nation's first gas utility and headquartered in
.
(C) 2020 M2 COMMUNICATIONS, source
