some kind of electric meter scam?

**jeffb** · December-22-10, 02:25 PM

my son woke up this morn and saw a guy coming out of his backyard. the guy was wearing a toolbelt and got into a white panelvan and drove away. then his notice his power was off. bill is paid. looked at his meter and it was turned sideways. we called dte and they said it wasnt them. they came out and and the guy said thats not how they shut the meters off. cops think its some kind of scam, but are not sure what. anybody else hear of something like this?

**Jimaz** · December-22-10, 03:58 PM

Were there any markings on the van? Did they leave any information about how to contact them to resolve the matter?

**rb336** · December-22-10, 04:36 PM

If DTE or Consumers is going to work on meters they will [[usually) contact you FIRST to let you know. They were in Lake Orion this week changing out some meters.

I got a letter last friday stating that they would be in my neighborhood doing indoor meter inspections

**GOAT** · December-22-10, 04:54 PM

Time of Use meters? Just a matter of time before these fuckers bleed you dry. The liberal, scum gov't we have in Ontario enacted that legislation so they can do their social engineering.

**jeffb** · December-22-10, 04:55 PM

no id on the van, it was parked several houses down so my kid didnt get a good look at it. dte says when they do cut power, they do it at the pole.i remember a scam yrs ago where they cut your power, then came back and wanted money on the spot to turn it back on.. but they may have seen the cops cars out front.

**Detroitnerd** · December-22-10, 05:22 PM

It's pretty easy to turn off power to a house that way: Cut the lockout tag's wire, pull off the meter dome, pop it back on sideways, and then there's no current running into the house anymore. I had to do something like that once myself to troubleshoot a friend's house that had partly burned in a fire. Why would you want to cut off power to a home like this? Not sure. Maybe to kill burglar alarms? I'm out of ideas on this one.

Anyway, pretty easy to fix. Just put the meter back in -- carefully -- the right way. Turn off all the appliances in the house that you can first.

**Detroitnerd** · December-22-10, 05:27 PM

Even if you wanted to strip copper, you'd really only be able to get a short section from meter to where it went into the home. That would be 1/0 wire, pretty good scrap, but I find it hard to believe anybody would go to this trouble just to scrap a few feet of 1/0. And what a pain in the ass that would be! You'd have to run new heavy wire from your service panel to your meter just to get the power back on.

**Django** · December-22-10, 05:51 PM

Wrong house number? Maybe the guy cut off the wrong house. Then again, if DTE cuts it at the pole??

I cant figure out how a scam could be had out of this but then again thats how the best scams work.

Be sure to let us know if you find anything out, thats a curious one.

**jeffb** · December-22-10, 08:36 PM

we thought it may have been a wrong address too, but dte stated that they wont cut power to anyone untill after the first of the year.

**Django** · December-23-10, 09:07 AM

Have you been on vacation, away? Maybe they were cuttin the power to the alarm like Detroitnerd said.. A house that looks like its not used is a target of course.