New Scam!
This evening, I received a call from one of my tenants. She told me that the gas company had shut the gas off at her house because she smelled gas. She said that they left her a note saying that a certified plumber needed to inspect and repair the gas before they would turn it back on.
I was somewhat annoyed that she called the gas company instead of calling me, but I told her that I would call my plumber tomorrow to come and look at the situation. She said that her uncle was a plumber and that she wanted her uncle to look at it. I told her that we had our own plumber and that she could NOT use her uncle.
About an hour later, I received a second call from this tenant. She said that she had found the problem which was a loose gas line going to the stove. She said that she no longer needed our plumber to come work on the gas. I responded that the gas company would not turn her gas back on until it had been cleared by a licensed gas provider (plumber).
After a short pause, she said that the gas had been turned off on October 14th!!! After questioning, she said that it was shut off for non-payment and that she had paid the bill today.
Have you figured out what's going on here? Think about it and I'll give you the answer in tomorrow's blog.
Comments (3)
I think Michael hit the nail on the head. Just another of many scams by tenants which illustrates why you should have total protection through your lease agreement as well as be aware of the possible scams tenants may try & pull of on you. If you use management companies, make sure you have clauses in both the lease agreement and the management agreement that protect you from this behavior.
Will Barnard, over 15 years ago
Sounds like Mike's idea is right, but I'm not certain here. Lets hear what this new scam looks like.....
Joshua Dorkin, over 15 years ago
My guess is that she wanted to write up an invoice from the "Plumber" and give it to you to pay, then she would take the money you sent to her "Plumber" to pay the gas bill. Then if that worked, then suddenly her "Plumber" would be working on all kinds of things in the apartment. Even more interesting; when I hooked up the boilers in my apartment the gas company said they didn't even need to see that the system was pressurized and they made my HVAC guy hook the meter up to the building. There was also a tag on the meter that the HVAC guy had to cut off saying that the installer was certified under some code rules to work with NG. So my point is that I don't think the gas companies are "Red tagging" anymore for liability reasons, which makes me think this tenant has been successful with this scam before and knows how things used to work.
Michael Shadow, over 15 years ago