Potential scam call relating to home move

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Reason: Investigating number.

Hi ​@JMarkham1980 ,

Thanks for the report! My name is Blastoise186 and I’m one of the Forum Volunteers who helps out around here and I’m also a cybersecurity professional. It looks like you’ve met my automated helper that picked up on a suspicious number you mentioned and alerted me (my tech trickery is pretty clever!).

I’ve just had the report come back on that number. My AI Scam Detection Bots have called it a few times and the report that came back from my BlastoiseLabs system indicates the number is fake and making false claims regarding OVO Energy. I can confirm it is NOT OVO and you were right to hang up. The IVR is completely wrong and the voice that you hear absolutely doesn’t match the one used by OVO - my bots report it’s the same one seen on literally every scam ever.

The real OVO contact info can be found below:

Thank you so much for letting me know about this one. I’m gonna alert ​@Bradley_OVO and ​@Ben_OVO immediately so this can be sent to the teams at the real OVO Energy to see what can be done to shut down the scam.

If there’s anything else I can do to help ya out, definitely let me know. I’m not OVO Staff myself so I can’t access your account, but I can definitely give advice that may help you get answers more easily from real ones.

You’ll probably also find this a bit ironic, but just this morning I posted a new idea that aims to help cover stuff like this. Feel free to check it out.

I know, the timing is sheer comedy for me - I had no idea you’d swing by an hour later! :)

Hi ​@Blastoise186 - thanks for the update. Unfortunately the plot thickens, because my mum has had a call from 0330 303 5063 and they have assured her that it was a genuine call!

Sounds like Ovo need to improve things on this number to provide a much better customer experience. 

Leave that with us - I’ve got ways to get that fed back as well. The Forum Moderators have the ability to feed back basically anything we feel needs to be raised. So consider it done.

0330 303 5063 is a genuine OVO number.

By the way… Could you also let the ICO know about the call please? The one you first came here about which my bots checked?

You can do that via https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/nuisance-calls-and-messages/spam-texts-and-nuisance-calls/report-spam-texts-and-nuisance-sales-calls/

Thanks!

Hi ​@Blastoise186 - just to be clear, the OVO agent calling from 0330 303 5063 assured my mum that the call from 0330 818 1406 was a genuine one, despite it seeming less than legit.

My suggestion to Ovo would be to have a page on their website detailing which numbers they use for different calls & if they're set on forcing people down online-only customer journeys, just set the niche ones to only make outbound calls.

Cheers, JM.

Hmm… Definitely worth raising a complaint for that if you can via https://ovoenergy.com/feedback . Feel free to reference this thread too.

I can definitely pass this back to the Forum Moderators to help make sure the right people hear about this, but registering a complaint makes sure you get the resolution I think you need which is unfortunately not something I can set up for you.

I will see what I can do about whether a page like that can be put up. It’s definitely something I’d like to see as well.

Hey ​@JMarkham1980 

Sorry to hear your mum’s had some trouble from a potential scam caller. I've reached out internally and we've established this isn’t an OVO owned number, so will be best to avoid if they do call again.

Blastoise186 has left some helpful advice already on how to report this if you wish to do so:

I do hope this helps.

Hi ​@Abby_OVO ,

Unfortunately, this doesn't help as an Ovo employee has told my mum that the 'scam' number definitely is genuine, to the point of sounding exasperated at the level of reassurance my mum was looking for. 

To have that level of confidence, suggests there must be a record on Ovo systems of a call to my mum from that number.

I can confirm that the number is indeed a scammer so OVO will have no record of the call.

My bots called it several times yesterday to check the legitimacy and every single call started off with the script Welcome to the OVO Point of Loss Team. Please hold on the line for the next available advisor or press one to opt out. Welcome to the OVO Energy Team, we are putting you through to the next available agent.

This does not sound professional and definitely isn’t the same as what OVO uses - it indicates use of VICIdial which OVO doesn’t use (OVO actually uses Genesys Cloud) - but a lot of scammers do use it.

I’ve traced the provider and am currently talking to them to get the number shut down.