Victim Location 48197
Total money lost $110
Type of a scam Utility
A person rang my doorbell. I answered (in my bathrobe – obviously I was being disturbed). The very vibrant young woman told me she was with … (not sure). Whatever she said had me believing she was with DTE. I asked why DTE was soliciting door-to-door and she said that DTE buys their gas from them and they wanted to cut out the middle man (??). She asked to see my utility bill and I obliged. She quickly said she needed to see if I qualified (by usage) and that I did. She pointed to the Customer charge and said "this will go away" as well as the taxes, etc. She told me 3 times the Customer Charge would go away if I signed up. Then she asked for my email address and phone number as well as asked me to get my phone. I brought out my old flip phone and she looked at me oddly then asked if I had a smart phone – I do not. Then asked if I have a lap top. I do not. She asked if I had a desk top. I do. She said she needed to send me an email and she needed to see the screen so I let her come into my home to look over my shoulder at the computer screen. She told me by buying directly from "them" I’d be locked in at $.57 if I signed the 2 year contract. All the while I’m still thinking that DTE had hired her and I asked a couple more times why DTE was doing this. I also pointed to the Customer Charge again and said – "so this Customer Charge will go away" and she replied it would. I don’t use gas during the summer (I have a gas dryer but dry my clothes on the line and a gas furnace) so I thought it probably would be a good deal as I’d save $11.25/mo on the monthly Customer Charge. So I signed.
Well, the Customer Charge never disappeared and DTE charged me $10 for switching. I got out the contract after the 2nd bill arrived and still had the Customer Charge and read that I would have had to cancel within a day maybe two to avoid a penalty. So I figured I lost my window of opportunity to cancel without a penalty. But after another 2 billing cycles I decided I really should air my grievance that the woman had deceived/lied to me. And it’s for that reasoning I finally did call them. I talked to someone in India. After a bit of conversation he asked for the DTE account number. After he recited it back to me he told me to hold on while he looked it up. I held on. He never came back – just dead silence for over 10 minutes. I hung up and wrote a message via their website. Today I got a call back and was told the cancellation had been done and I’d be billed a $100 cancellation fee. I asked to speak to someone above him as I was not going to pay the fee – he said there was no one. He did give me their credit dept’s number and told me to wait 2 days to call them so the charge will appear on my account. He didn’t make it sound promising that the charge would be taken off. I told him I didn’t want my (excellent) credit rating to be tarnished. He said it would not be sent to an outside credit agency – it is all internal. And that is where I’m at right now.
In my message to them I stated that I felt they should reimburse me for the Customer Charges that had already been paid – but he didn’t address that when he called me.
I never would have signed up with this company had I realized it was not DTE – I think I may have thought she was representing DTE because she said DTE would still bill me.
Victim Location 48076
Type of a scam Utility
A company rep rang the door bell. Dequincy Lewis (#10465) representing Michigan Gas & Electric flashed his badge and said there was a problem with my Consumers Energy billing. He flashed a copy of a Consumers Energy (not mine) and asked to check my bill. He asked if I had a smart phone. I said NO. I said any information he had could be sent to my email so I gave him my email. He was punching in my mail and said he still needed my phone number. I gave him the phone number. He said he needed to verify the email on my computer. I told him my laptop was at the office. The quick trick – since he had my email on his phone, he asked me to enter my password to access my email on his phone. I told him NO. (Doing that would give him access to my account). I got an old bill and he proceeded to mark the line on the bill under: Gas Cost Recovery [email protected] 3.057700 $103.04.
He marked under 33.7 with 5.5 (this would be the rate his company charges).
If you check carefully, that line 33.7 is how much gas you used for that billing period, not the gas rate you are being charged!! Fast talker!!!
I told him I am busy and can’t sign anything now. He said someone will check back in a week or so and said for me to sign the form in my email to activate the account.
I check the email and read the form. Under the question: am I the person at this address, I checked NO and the form displayed "Cancelled by customer".