We received this call yesterday, maybe let older family members know about this one and a heads up to everyone. Caller says they are with the city and they have a "contractor" doing inspections in your area of sump pumps and back flow valves, they need access to your home and want to schedule an appointment. They know your name and address (really not hard to find out). In our case the city IS doing sewer work in the area but they sent out a letter that stated they will NOT need access to any homes, which had me second guessing for a split second.
Telltale immediate signs:
Corrupt or invalid call display (either number or name). In this case 12 digit number/a number not valid in NA.
Long distance ring tone yet they are from the City of Toronto (not everyone still has this feature).
LD ring tone and local number, not in this case but in others.
Normally when I see the above I just answer and hang-up without saying anything but lately I have been politely messing with them. If they are offshore, less politely.
In my case I pointed out to the benchod on the phone that the city said they will not need access. I think this actually threw him off as he had no idea the city was actually doing sewer work in the area??? Then pointed out his caller ID was invalid.... he gave up.
The angle IMO, guy comes into your home and starts to point out all the "not to code" items and you need to pay up for them to fix or they will shut off water, heat etc., likely really bad rental contracts as well. They are no longer permitted to do door to door sales so they call and set an appointment.... We have had similar ones for free energy inspections, furnace inspection, etc.
My advice to give to your older family members. If they get a call like this tell the caller you are busy but you will call them back at the number displayed on your phone, then hang up. If by some chance it is legit the call display will not be spoofed.
An additional note on how scammers are doing things these days. They tend to call during business hours as they want to target retired people not working people, just a higher percentage mark (WFH must be messing with them these days). Many may have noticed scam calls on weekends and at night are all but gone for this reason.
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Another interesting thing outside of this scam. We always got a laugh out of the English mistakes in email or phishing scams, turns out it is on purpose as they want to target stupid people and it is a way of filtering out smarter people that will just take up their time with no payoff.
Telltale immediate signs:
Corrupt or invalid call display (either number or name). In this case 12 digit number/a number not valid in NA.
Long distance ring tone yet they are from the City of Toronto (not everyone still has this feature).
LD ring tone and local number, not in this case but in others.
Normally when I see the above I just answer and hang-up without saying anything but lately I have been politely messing with them. If they are offshore, less politely.
In my case I pointed out to the benchod on the phone that the city said they will not need access. I think this actually threw him off as he had no idea the city was actually doing sewer work in the area??? Then pointed out his caller ID was invalid.... he gave up.
The angle IMO, guy comes into your home and starts to point out all the "not to code" items and you need to pay up for them to fix or they will shut off water, heat etc., likely really bad rental contracts as well. They are no longer permitted to do door to door sales so they call and set an appointment.... We have had similar ones for free energy inspections, furnace inspection, etc.
My advice to give to your older family members. If they get a call like this tell the caller you are busy but you will call them back at the number displayed on your phone, then hang up. If by some chance it is legit the call display will not be spoofed.
An additional note on how scammers are doing things these days. They tend to call during business hours as they want to target retired people not working people, just a higher percentage mark (WFH must be messing with them these days). Many may have noticed scam calls on weekends and at night are all but gone for this reason.
****
Another interesting thing outside of this scam. We always got a laugh out of the English mistakes in email or phishing scams, turns out it is on purpose as they want to target stupid people and it is a way of filtering out smarter people that will just take up their time with no payoff.
