SCAM Alert!!!
So it’s 7:30pm on this quite Monday January 23rd 2017. We at PG PAINT & DESIGN had settled for a relaxing evening after a long day’s work just like the rest of the great folks in the City of Ottawa. Phone Rings….. She says her name is Rachel and she’s from “Ontario Water Health Safety Services” (of course she had to repeat it 3 times cause it wasn’t coming through clearly, not because I’m deaf but she mumbled it every time.
So I pretended to listen
She continued to tell me that our City of Ottawa water is not being filtered. It is at extremely high levels of chlorine and other stuff that I kind of started to tune out because I just had a gut feeling this was a scam. Especially since I had not heard local Ottawa news or read anything in the local Ottawa newspapers lately. You’ll find that Both the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun had put out articles the are listed at the end of this post. I have to admit I just haven’t had the time to read them
As a fellow Ottawan I felt the need to put this out there and let others know because there is so much scamming out there and we need to all protect ourselves.
So the phone conversation goes something like this:
Me on the Phone
She says: We have our team out in the K2E 7M8 area tomorrow and wondered what a convenient time would be to have one of the guys stop in and check your water. He’ll watch you run the water from your kitchen tap and then test it. Right there and then I thought THIS CAN’T BE REAL!!
So of course I told her there is no convenient time tomorrow because I need to research what she was talking about first. Since I had not heard anything regarding this from any of the news sources here in Ottawa. So she tells me to go to the Health Canada website and look up “Drinking Water Chlorination”. Then she asks me again about what the good time would be for someone to come by tomorrow. I told her that Absolutely NO TIME was good. I would google everything first. So she said OK then do your research and hopefully we can call you back again.
So first I googled “Ontario Water & Health Safety Services” and all that kept coming up was Scam, Door-to-Door Water Testing is a scam. There is no “Ontario Water & Healthy Safety Services” not that I could google anyway. So then I went to Google and typed in the Health Canada Website and typed a search for drinking water chlorination just like she told me to. You can read everything at the Health Canada Website articles There was no warning or anything I could find, if you do I hope you’ll let us know or at least the City of Ottawa and our Mayor Jim Watson.
We sincerely believe our water to be safe here in our city of Ottawa otherwise we would have heard something from our city officials and FOR CERTAIN Health Canada would have put out warning for all of us.So please take note and don’t get caught opening your door to these scammers
Write this PHONE NUMBER 613-225-1441“ONTARIO WATER HEALTH SAFETY SERVICES” on a piece of paper and put it near your phone to remind you to either not answer the call or remind you to NOT OPEN THE DOOR to anyone claiming they are they to check your water.
If you get any of these unsolicited calls or someone just shows up at your door without the proper City of Ottawa I.D. Badges please report then by calling our Ottawa Police Service at 613-236-1222.
The Ottawa Sun Article can be found by clicking here — The Ottawa Citizen article can be read by clicking here
It’s important we all look out for each other. Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you found it useful please share it with your family and friends so that they too can be protected and aware of these scammers. Till the next time
