My wife and I are worried we might have been targeted for a scam - or maybe some other dodgy activity. I’d appreciate your opinions, please.
I’ll try and describe all that I remember as carefully as I can, so apologies if this reads long, dull and boring.
TL;DR version: guy had us sign paperwork for a supposed free boiler paid by the government, and took some tax related information. We now doubt it was legit.
Long version: last Friday I was home with my wife. Some time after lunch, a guy introducing himself as “Gary from Go Green” rang our door and told us that there was a government program to fund the purchase of new boilers for home heating. He also showed my wife a badge, which she now says it said “Go Green”, with no logo or image. That’s when my wife called me.
Our boiler is old and faulty, and we are getting quotes for replacing it, so this seemed a Godsend. Maybe I should have remembered about things being too good to be true…!
Anyway, this Gary asked us that if our boiler was old enough, and if we were the recipients of Child Tax Credit - which for the benefit of non-UK people is a type of tax benefit people on lower incomes can get if they have children. We do get Child Tax Credit, so Gary told us that there was a very good chance that we could get the boiler replaced for free if it was old enough. He asked to see the most recent letter from the Inland Revenue (the tax people, for those not living in this here island), and he took a picture of it with an Ipad he had. Then he asked to have a look at the boiler, he found with our help its brand and model number and looked it up on some web site on his mobile phone.
Then he showed us the web page he found; the page said that the efficiency of our boiler was around 72% (if I remember correctly). Gary said that this, together with our boiler being faulty (it very visibly drips water), would let us have this free boiler. He encouraged us to apply and said it was first come, first served.
While we were talking, both my wife and I asked him the name of his agency, and if he could give us a web site for this program. In both cases he said we could just Google “go green” and we could easily find it, and that it was a similar program to the one that offered people with lower incomes, or children, or both, free insulation for lofts and cavity walls (that by the way exists, because we were able to participate last year).
Gary said that we were going to get “the same boiler” - he explained he meant the same brand when we were surprised. Then the paperwork came out. It was a single form to fill with our details, sign, and a checkbox to pass our contact information to British Gas, a large gas company famous for claiming high quality of work but charging though the nose.
He said the next step would be for an engineer from British Gas to contact us to evaluate the type and size of boiler needed. He also said that a colleague was around the area for solar panels, and asked if we were also interested. When we said yes, he said he would contact his mate and send him over.
This supposed other guy never arrived.
Later on in the evening we started to have second thoughts. We couldn’t find a company or agency or program called exactly “Go Green” that did this kind of thing. I found these guys but they do waste management. What we could find was a government program called Green Deal, which works kinda like a loan - the government pays ahead and people pay back by installments. There are cashback opportunities for people with Child Tax Credit but they’re for people on a very low income.
The most worrying thing was the guy taking a picture of the letter from the Inland Revenue. This had our National Insurance Numbers (similar to a Social Security number, for the USians), our full names and addresses. We are worried that they could be used to create fake identities.
So my wife called the police. They listened to our story and told us that, since we didn’t get asked any financial information, we shouldn’t have much to worry about. As for our National Insurance Number, the policeman on the phone explained that if something odd happened, the Inland Revenue would contact us to double check.
So, that was how things went. I suppose we could call British Gas and ask if they know anything about this. Are we being paranoid about it? Are we right to worry, and what could we do next? Was this a setup for something else entirely, like casing our house for a theft?
I suppose we should have remembered that if something is too good to be true it most likely isn’t, but in our defense we were ill and tired, and worried about this damn boiler of ours, and there were some government programs in the past to help with the costs of upgrading heating and insulation. But they were by the Labour government, not by Conservatives, who tend not to be keen on free stuff for poor people.