The scam piles up in Bad Tölz: Unknown callers try to find out the electricity meter number.
Under no circumstances should you divulge them.
Bad Tölz
- Advertising calls by phone are prohibited, but not that rare.
The latest scam: Fraudsters ask for the electricity meter number.
If they find out, the perpetrators have the option of terminating an electricity contract under a foreign name and concluding a new one.
One of those affected is Helmut Groß from Tölz, who received two dubious calls on Monday.
First, “a gentleman with a foreign accent” called him with a Tölzer area code, reports the 65-year-old: “He said something about the fact that the prices for green electricity were going down and that I urgently need to change my electricity contract.” He just had to tell him just say the meter number, then he will be supplied at a cheaper rate.
“I replied that I couldn't find out the meter number so quickly,” says Groß.
Callers use Tölzer area codes
The two continued to talk until the stranger asked again for the meter number.
"When I then asked whose instructions he was calling, I only got an unclear answer," reports Groß.
"It all seemed very strange to me and I hung up."
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Walter Huber Head of the Tölzer Stadtwerke
© Arndt Pröhl
A little later an unknown caller answered him again, this time with the Munich area code.
“He said that he is from the energy portal and that our electricity contract is expiring.
That's why he wants to talk to my wife. ”This time, Groß hung up immediately,“ because I didn't want to bother her with it ”.
Stadtwerke Bad Tölz warn: Electricity contracts do not simply expire
Julia Mohaupt, press spokeswoman for the Stadtwerke, knows such dubious calls: “We have a lot of people calling us who have been told that their electricity contract is about to expire and that they should give their meter number.” The callers usually used a Tölzer or Penzberg area code.
Mohaupt emphasizes: “The calls are clearly illegal.
An electricity contract never expires, you have to actively cancel it. ”Employees of the municipal utility would“ never ”ask for personal data such as the meter number on the phone.
"It's crazy, it's getting worse and worse," confirms Walter Huber, Managing Director of Tölzer Stadtwerke.
A reputable company could well be behind such an advertising call, “but the distribution channel is definitely dubious.
Stadtwerke would never talk anyone into an electricity contract over the phone ”.
Unknown perpetrators also tried to defraud the public utilities
The public utilities were just a hair's breadth victim of an attempted fraud: “We received a credit from Amazon for one cent on our account.
And then we got an email that we should transfer the cent back.
Had we done that, a four or five-digit sum would probably have been debited from us. "With larger companies, this method can be quite successful, says Huber," because in a large company not everyone knows what the other is ordering or buying " .
Above all, older people are at risk, "because they are often more good-natured on the phone".
If even more customers complain about dubious advertising calls, you have to think about filing a complaint with the police, says Huber.
"But normally you don't get very far with a complaint against unknown persons."
By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our new, regular Bad Tölz newsletter.