Somewhat fishy visit from a maintenance worker

[prog.livejournal.com]

This afternoon some guy mashed the doorbells on the house I live in until I (a home-office type) answered. He identified himself as from the City of Somerville, come to look at the house's "meters" (I didn't catch which kind), because they were emitting "bogus" readings.

He interrupted my workday, so since my mind was grinding away on other tasks, I robotically let him inside to diddle around in our basement without getting any ID or name or nuthin, or even looking outside to note the presence or absence of a Somerville-branded vehicle. Presently, the man emerged to report that all was in order, and left.

As you are aware by reading this far, I now feel like an idiot, rather aghast at how far away I let my head float. My landlord (who I emailed about this) is understandably like "wtf" at me.

Help me, I am stupid: Does it even make sense that a city worker would care about "meters"? Isn't that more the provenance of utility companies? If it does make sense, who would I call to confirm that they sent a guy out? (And would they be open on the weekend? Can you understand why the fact this all happened late Friday afternoon would make me more paranoid?)

More to the point, has this dude maybe visited anyone else with a similar goal? He was a 40/50-something heavy-set white guy in work clothes. Seemed sane and apologetically professional. So he either was who he said he was -- which is, I imagine, the more likely case -- or I totally got pwned, and have no idea what kind of horrible plots are even now hatching underneath my kitchen floor.

Comments

[laryu.livejournal.com]

It's possible that it was the water department. They changed my water meter last summer.

With that said, I fear the worst. The City sent me a number of communications and scheduled the visit for internal work. But you could call them, that department has been relatively responsive over the phone, including when I had billing issues several years ago, and should have a schedule of any planned work by property.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I second calling the city water people, and if they have no idea, immediately call the cops. Even if nothing bad came of it for you, they will want to know that there's some sort of scam going on. . .

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

yeah, I could buy it being the water department, but still. Careless of him if it was. Anything else fishy happen?

[prog.livejournal.com]

He left the way he came in, talking to me as he did so, so it's not like he was carrying off an armload of goodies. (I'm pretty absentminded, but I would have noticed that. Probably.)

I've left a voice mail with the city's water & sewer dept; dunno if they're open Saturday, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Might be NStar

[mattglet.livejournal.com]

I got a letter in the mail maybe a week ago from NStar, asking if they can come in and routinely check the electric meter or something like that. I can't remember the exact request in the letter, but hopefully giving you an idea that it might be them. Worth looking into though.

Re: Might be NStar

[prog.livejournal.com]

Nope, the first thing he said was "I'm from the City of Somerville", which would preclude NStar. But, I appreciate the note!

Re: Might be NStar

[callslightning.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely NOT NSTAR.
An NSTAR guy came by my place today (around Ball Sq.) about checking things and "upgrades" that apparently might need doing. He was wearing a ton of NSTAR stuff and identified himself as being with them. I told him my landlord wasn't home to let him into the basement, and he said my landlord should call NSTAR for an appointment, leaving some clear paperwork, which says:

"Federal and State regulations require NSTAR to inspect the gas piping on your property up to and including the gas meter for gas leaks and also for atmospheric corrosion every three years. There is no charge for this inspection but it requires access to any NSTAR-owned piping inside the building."

The wording from the regulations is also included.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

You might want to go check all of the doors/windows that you keep locked in the basement. Because I can totally see that as the scam - unlock a basement door during the day, wander in at night while people are likely to be asleep.

(the water meter was my first guess too, fwiw)

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

yeah, totally. make sure everything is secured, locked. test it to make positive sure.

then look around, with a flashlight, and see if anything is disturbed. i can see a scam where they mess with your heating or something else, so you have to call in to have work done.

but really, i wouldn't let anyone into my house without significant ID, pre-warning from the city, or a court order ;)

#

[prog.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea. I'll go bang around downstairs right now, before lights-out. If nothing seems out of order I'll feel a lot better about this (though still kinda dumb).

fraud?

[springhill02143.livejournal.com]

The City closes at noon on Fridays. I'd be surprised if this was for real.

Re: fraud?

[grateful1311.livejournal.com]

The DPW closes at 4pm on fridays.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

In Cambridge, the water department reads each water meter electronically every day and they store the results; they supposedly will notify you if your meter readings seem odd. Several years ago I got a large water bill and when I called they were able to identify hight readings for 4 days over thanksgiving - I remembered that I'd been away and a toilet was running the whole weekend.

Does your building have a meter for each unit?

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Do you know how the meters communicate with the city's computer?

[jwg.livejournal.com]

I don't know the details but the meters are Neptunes and it has a pair of wires running to a Star Hexagram unit outside my house. The Star transmits using some wireless technology. They record readings 4 times a day.

[tober.livejournal.com]

For the current generation of water meters, many use a short-range radio communication system for reading. The water utility has to have a vehicle or person equipped with appropriate equipment drive or walk near the location where the meter is installed in order to read the meter. I think there also exist meters that contain wireless (telephony) modems and report their readings that way. I don't know which Cambridge uses. The latter type might actually report in daily, the former type probably get read, at most, once every couple weeks. The previous generation of meters required, for reading the meter, the utility to plug a piece of equipment into a socket located usually on the outside of the building and connected to the meter - the socket is almost always in a black rectangular housing with weatherproof cover. Before that, meters were used that required physical access to the meter in order to read.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Cambridge gets meter readings four times a day, so I really hope they don't have to drive around to get within range of every meter in the city.

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

If your local DPW is like my local DPW, they don't always drive marked trucks, they don't properly identify themselves, and they act like total assholes.

(Short form of my story: I live in a duplex. Got up, turned on water...no water. Heard banging around in basement. Went downstairs, saw some odd guy in basement. Said (an admittedly sarcastic) "Hello...who are you?" He turns, looks at me with disdain, then turns back to his work and says, "who are you?" I said, "I live upstairs, who are you?" He says, "The water guy." It continued on in that vein. Needless to say, I was Unimpressed.)

[ron_newman]

What was the final outcome of this? Did he turn out to be a legit Somerville water department guy?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Almost certainly. First thing Monday morning, I was woken up by someone performing the same ringing-all-the-doorbells trick. I didn't want to get out of bed for it, so I didn't. But it didn't seem very thiefly to take the weekend off and get right back into it the following morning at 8 sharp, so I dismissed the whole thing, (And I never saw him again, so I bet my landlord was home and took care of it, too.)

All that said I appreciate the sounding board that davis_square provided; it helped me keep my calm on until then.