Chugach Electric officials say they’ve seen a rise in reports of people trying to scam their customers.
Chugach spokeswoman Julie Hasquet said the utility has received dozens of calls in the last week from members who say they’ve been told they need to pay immediately, or will lose service.
“Our members have been getting calls from people saying, ‘you owe money. We're going to shut off your power unless you pay right now,’” Hasquet said. “And they're telling them to give a credit card, or call this 800 number, or go to Walmart and get a Green Dot card, whatever that is, and pay us that way. So we just want folks to know that is not how we do business.”
Hasquet said Chugach takes a much different approach when notifying customers about overdue bills. First they send notices in the mail, followed by shutoff notices. After that, the company issues robocalls letting people know their payment is late.
And while Hasquet said Chugach has been able to document phone information that the scammers have been using, it’s difficult to catch them.
“They're constantly changing the numbers that they call from,” Hasquet said. “They even spoofed us last week, and they were using a Chugach number, so it looked like it was coming from Chugach. They've actually also gone on some of our call waiting, and they've co-opted some of our voices.”
Hasquet said the best way for customers to combat the scammers is to simply hang up on them.
Chugach isn’t the only Southcentral utility seeing an uptick in scammers. ENSTAR Natural Gas posted a message on social media this week saying customers had been receiving scam calls threatening to turn off their service unless they call an 888 number to make a payment.
