Victim Location 07076
Type of a scam Utility
A message was left on my home phone answering machine today about getting reduced rates or a rebate for electric usage and to have my PSE&G bill ready. When I called back they mentioned PSE&G and wanted my account #. I had just had some work done by PSE&G the day before and thought they were calling in reference to the work just completed. I gave them my PSE&G account #. They had issues with my name which made me suspicious. I asked them if they were PSE&G and they said no. They wanted to talk to me about switching electric suppliers. They said they were from the New Jersey Customer Choice Program and that there was a company that would provide cheaper electric rates than PSE&G. I told them I was not interested. I immediately called PSE&G to ask if they worked with New Jersey Customer Choice and they said no. PSE&G said to watch my bill and letters from them about switching my electric supplier. They had mentioned that call might have been an utility ‘slamming’ scam call. I was told there was nothing I could do not to stop any switches since they have my name, home phone number, address and account number. I am concerned with that info they might be able to do something else in addition to slamming. I did a google search and found nothing about a New Jersey Customer Choice program using those exact words.
There should be some additional mechanism to ‘re-verify’ a utility supplier switch request by the PSE&G BEFORE it actually happens. Nothing has happened yet but it could any time in the future. I cannot put any type of lock on my PSE&G account to force a call to me before anything is done for me to verify the changes.
Is New Jersey Customer Choice a real program? There are other energy programs with a similar name. I cannot tell for sure if this call was legit.