British Gas Scam

[FreyaBee]

I was almost taken in this evening by a phone call from 03332029470 ( foreign lady who said her name was Victoria )claiming to be British Gas saying they needed to replace my gas meter and install a smart meter.
When I asked her which meter, inside or outside, she did not know ! There is only an outside meter ! So that confirmed it was a scam


I checked the number on a 'who called me" website and 180,000 people had done the same saying it was a scam... Take care

[Hopkirk]

British Gas employees probably don't know if your meter is inside or outside.

[bobbinwales]

Your right to be cautious, I would of asked them to write or send me a secure message. But it could still of been genuine- a genuine caller would just have a list of customers with old style meters''' they wouldnt neeed to know where it is

[FreyaBee]

It has now been confirmed by Br Gas that it is a scam.
If I had stayed on line the scammer would next have asked bank details

[FreyaBee]

The overall rating is Negative. There have been 180,571 phone lookups, and users have left 1640 comments.

0333 202 9470 is a non-geographic number operated by Vodafone Ltd (C&W)

[phone] has been identified as a smart meter scam associated with the UK but without a specific city or region.

The summary of detected keywords found in the reports is as follows: British Gas (8 times), smart meter (6 times), scam (5 times), spam (2 times), billing (1 time)

[bobbinwales]

Am not doubting you freyabee, I'd always assume it was scam .... all i was saying is them not knowing where your meter is isnt enough on its own to say its a scam

[FreyaBee]

I know bob.. Problem is the scammers are able to 'spoof' genuine numbers which is what they did ro me.

[gingejbee]

I'd be quite surprised if any utility company rang individual customers. I'm always contacted by email or letter for genuine contact reasons.

[FreyaBee]

I sent a private messge to British Gas on their FB page and one of their staff checked my records and confirmed that no one had phoned from British Gas. He said it was a scam and tbere was nothing they could do to stop spoofers of their phone number and recommended I report to actionfraud.
The same situation exists with bank fraudsters. I said there should be more prominent warnings on their website, although they have warned about fraudulent emails being sent by scammers.

[CharmedP3]

As soon as I picked up the phone, I googled the phone number, which brought me to this site. I was intrigued to see what the scammer was going to say, (I've watched too many episodes of Scam Interceptors). He said he wanted to upgrade my conventional meters to smart meters. I told him the truth, (pretending I thought he was from British Gas), "You can't because you've tried to do this before & because of the way our meters are set up you can't change them." He gave up straight away. If this was British Gas - they'd of quizzed me & would have tried to help. I know that because they've done that before.