“Good Morning. This is Sylvia and I am giving you a courtesy call on behalf of your toner suppliers. We are aware there will be a large price increase happening soon and would like to offer you the opportunity to stock up on your Toner at your current, lower price. Can I send you a few boxes of your usual kind? Super! Don’t thank me-glad to do it. Now, how do you spell your name again?”
Scammers, toner pirates, toner phoner, boiler room operators, call them whatever you want, but the bottom line is that their main goal is to create deception. Phone scammers will try to induce their victims into buying products such as toner (the dry powder ink for most copy machines) at seemingly cheap prices, only to inflate them as soon as the bill arrives. Or worse yet, you get billed and never get your toner at all and find out the scammer had no relation to your regular supplier. Slick talking, pushy, and sometimes even overly condescending these criminals cost victims (large and small businesses) as well as schools, government agencies, and nonprofit institutions an estimated $50-200 million per year.
The toner scam has been around for a long time but a lot of people don’t know about it. Knowing about it can save you a lot of money.
How it works:
A person calls the company, says they are from your copier company, that they are making sure that their records are up to date and then asks you to verify the make and model of the copier. The person taking the call may not realize that this is a scam.
After a few weeks another person may call and say that they are from your copier company and that they wanted to let you know that the price of toner is going to increase soon and would you like to place an order to beat the price increase. If you say yes, they take that as an authorization and send you toner after they confirm your address and copier model.
THE MAJORITY OF CBS CONTRACTS INCLUDE TONER
Toner Pirates make your company pay for toner twice; once under your existing contract and again from the scam company. This can continue for an extended period of time until someone realizes that they are purchasing the toner! By this time, it is very difficult to recover the money paid to the scam toner company. If you are alert and catch this scam when it is happening, you can save your company a fair amount of money and inconvenience.
If you are on the receiving end of one of these scams:
Tell them you will have to check on the model number and call them back. Get the company name and phone number.
Usually when you ask for the phone number and their address, they will hang up.
Check with CBS to find out if it is a legitimate inquiry. Phone: (780) 490-5600
