Hi, I'm Brandi with Gulf Power. Either you or someone you know has received a
harassing phone scam, calling asking you to pay hundreds of dollars within the
hour or your power is going to be shut off. It happens to 17.6 million
Americans a year. That's twice the population of New York City. We've
got a scam expert with us today. This is Heather and she's an analyst in our
Customer Care Center at Gulf Power. Heather, walk us through what are the
most common scams that you hear about? So the most common scams are normally by
the customer purchasing some type of prepaid card or money card or a gift card
at a drugstore. Yeah and a lot of times and my grandma's told me about this is
you know they'll call and they'll be really aggressive. So what kind of calls...
what kind of items can they look for when they get a phone call like that?
A lot of reports say that the scam caller was very threatening, very
aggressive, very demanding that the customer pay within a short amount of
time which is normally about 45 minutes to an hour or their power will be
disconnected. And there are a few things that you can look for if you do feel as
though someone's showing up from Gulf Power. First, it's the logo attire.
We have logo attire that we wear. We also have badges that we have to wear as
teammates here. So look for those items. Definitely. But if you're unsure if
the person is actually an employee then there are other things that you can do.
So how do you get in contact with Gulf Power? We have a couple ways to
contact us. You can contact us by phone. You can actually chat with us online now.
You can send us an email and you can also contact us via social media. And
those are great ways even if you just want to verify that the message
that you got in an email or on the phone is legitimate. Yeah and I would just say
that if you ever receive a phone call like that, but especially before you
make a payment, I would call us to verify our payment methods so if you do owe
a balance you don't make a payment to the way of scam caller is
asking you to make the payment. And it also helps us keep track you know to
make sure that we continue to help sharing tips with you to protect
yourself. Another thing we want to talk about is simply how do you protect
yourself from scams? What are things that you can look for? What can I be doing
proactively to make sure I'm not targeted? I think the most important
thing is just staying up-to-date on the most current scam tactics that are out
there. I would also set up an account online so
you can review your account balance or your information any time so you don't
fall victim to somebody catching you off guard with that balance inquiry that
they're trying to give you. The scam callers are very sophisticated now. We've
had reports of the scam caller having it show Southern Company or even our
customer service number on the caller ID. So just make sure again that you contact
us if you have any questions about disconnect. Just call. And I do want to say
that setting up a Gulf Power account is easy. You go online, you sign up for it
and you can do so many things through the my Gulf Power account. What are some
things that you can do? Well you can view your bill, you can pay your bill, you can
view your daily usage, you can enroll in certain programs and rebates.
There's just so much you can do. I mean you can get energy-saving tips. You can
sign up for text alerts. I just recently did that and now I know when my
bill is due, if it's past due or if I even have an outage. It'll text me and tell
me when the outages happened and when it will possibly be restored. So a lot
of good information at the MyGulfPower.com. Thank you so much Heather.
This has been great to share with some of our customers. And as always, if you want to
get connected with us, you can connect at MyGulfPower.com or follow us on
social media at Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. As always, stay safe friends.
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