Utilities industry makes progress in fight to protect customers against scams
WASHINGTON – Scammers posing as utility employees continue to deceive and rob customers across the nation but the industry is making progress against these predators as it learns about their evolving tactics and fights back.
“Slowly but surely,” said Sheri Givens, executive director of Utilities United Against Scams.
Givens served on a panel of experts who discussed the issue Sunday at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Winter Policy Summit in Washington D.C.
The panelists agreed that teaching consumers about the ways that scammers operate — so that they can fend off attacks themselves — is one of the strongest tools the industry has to ward off the thieves.
A strong customer outreach and education campaign by Duke Energy has resulted in a reduction of about 50 percent in the number of instances of where customers are victimized, Givens said. “They’re meeting their customers where they are.”
Utilities United Against Scams has been coordinating among more than 100 utilities in the United States and Canada. Givens, president of Givens Energy, has authored the Consumer’s Guide to Imposter Utility Scams for the Edison Electric Institute.
Companies and consumer groups have used as many of the communications tools as they have at their disposal to spread the word, including traditional advertising, social media, email, direct mail, bill messages and news releases to the mainstream media.
They’ve participated in events, partnered with law enforcement and are coordinating with retailers who sell pre-paid credit cards to help educate customers about the threat.
Utilities also have trained their customer service representatives on the issue so that they can help customers who call about suspicious activity.
In general, working as an imposter continues to be among the most common methods of deception.
In many cases imposters call customers on the phone, fraudulently identifying themselves as utility employees, and threaten to shut off service unless the customer goes out and buys a pre-paid “green-dot” credit card and makes a payment.
Senior citizens and minorities have been particularly vulnerable to these threats and experts have seen a significant number of small minority-owned businesses fall victim.
Lisa Peek, building and security asset analyst for Georgia Power Co., said that in her experience 70 percent to 80 percent of scam calls affect commercial and not residential customers.
“Getting the message out is huge for us,” she added.
In some instances, imposters go directly to customers’ doors and demand payment. In especially bold attacks, an imposter will distract a customer while an accomplice goes in and robs the premises.
“These are serious,” Peek said. “Our partnership with law enforcement is critical in these types of instances.”
Teaching customers to avoid scams requires care, said Barbara Bossart, chief of Reliability and Service Analysis for The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Her agency tries to educate customers on the right questions to ask should they get a suspicious call. It’s important because Ohio is a deregulated state where customers can choose third-party energy suppliers and regulators don’t want to discourage their participation in the market.
“We don’t want customers to be afraid to do transactions over the phone,” Bossart said.
Combating the abuse of toll-free numbers has become an important front in the fight against utility scams.
A toll-free number is a trusted resource for a company, said Joel Bernstein, vice president, Regulatory and Public Policy at Somos Inc. It’s a sign of legitimacy, that a company is invested in serving its customers.
“It’s our job to keep that as a trusted resource,” Bernstein added.
Somos has served as the registry administrator for toll-free numbers in North America and has been supporting utilities for the past year by shutting off the toll-free numbers that scammers have used to receive return calls from unwitting customers.
Somos, which manages 40 million toll-free numbers, cannot shut down outbound calls from perpetrators, but can shut down numbers to which the criminals direct customers to call back to make payments, Bernstein said.
“We’ve been at this for less than 12 months,” he noted.
When Somos first got involved, it could take two days to get a number shut off. But Somos has been improving its process and now can shut down a toll-free number in as little as 15 minutes.
That frustrates scammers by forcing them to go out and obtain even more numbers to perpetrate their illicit activity. Since Somos got engaged, the organization has shut down more than 1,200 lines.
“I’m making their life miserable,” Bernstein said.
