HELENA — Some NorthWestern Energy customers in Montana, Nevada, and South Dakota are receiving scam calls. The scammers are attempting to steal money from customers by threatening immediate service disconnection.
Scammers are found in all forms of communication, calls, texts, emails, you name it.
Recently, some NorthWestern Energy customers have become targets, the scammers are demanding immediate payment from customers within the hour. Saying if they don’t receive it, their service will be cut off.
The Supervising Attorney for the Montana Office of Consumer Protection, Jake Griffith, has dealt with this issue before.
“The trick to a scam is immediacy. You want to call somebody, you want to make it an immediate issue, something that’s important to them, something that’s going to get them to react before they can actually think through logically and realize that this might be a scam.”
In a press release, NorthWestern Energy states that ‘Northwestern Energy never demands immediate payment or a specific payment type, such as a prepaid card or at kiosk machines that accept cash payments…such as bitcoin ATMs.’
NorthWestern Energy also does not use QR codes to request or process payments, and customers will receive multiple disconnection notices before their service is shut off.
Customers are always offered several bill payment options, not only just one.
“If it’s a company that is calling you, you always have the option of looking at like your bill statement and calling them back…
