North Georgia EMC is warning residents to stay alert for thieves and scam artists.

There is a telephone scam in which the caller claims to be an NGEMC employee and told the NGEMC member they needed to come to the home and change the meter.

The caller told the resident a 16-percent increase would be added to the bill for doing this. The NGEMC member then heard a prompt to press 1 if this was an error message.

Scammers steal in many ways. They may try to enter your home by false pretenses or claim your bill is behind and threaten service disconnection unless you immediately pay by credit card or other means. If scammers leave a number to call back, do not call. A thief taking your call may even answer it as NGEMC or Georgia Power.

NGEMC representatives do not call customers to request credit card information and representatives do not visit customers’ homes to collect payments. Credit card transactions by phone can only be initiated by the member calling NGEMC’s published phone numbers.

To stay safe from scam artists, impostors, and thieves:

Never open your home to strangers who are acting as utility workers.

Never provide financial or personal information to callers, people who visit your home or contact you by any other means.

Always report possible fraud or scams to local law enforcement and the local utility;

If you have any questions about utility scams, please call your local NGEMC office in Trion at 706.734.7341.