Beware of Con Men Acting as TM (Telekom) Contractor!

This happened in Sec 19 PJ.

Last Friday afternoon, I realized my phone line went completely dead (no sound at all). I reported the fault to TM via 1300888123 (100) and a lady in the call centre told me that she will dispatch a technician to check on the issue.

I called TM again on Saturday to check on progress but still no update. On Sunday afternoon, I received a call from TM technician asking if I am at home as there are no issue at the carrier end. I was out shopping at that time and so we made an appointment on Monday evening at 5PM for him to troubleshoot.

At about 2.16PM on Sat, a young man believed to be malay/indonesian came on a motorcycle claiming to be a TM contractor and said he was here to fix my phone issue. He came in a pink Kriss motorcycle. He wore a red windbreaker with a red hat. He wore a dark blue t-shirt with the words TM Kontactor under the wind breaker. He brought alone a small red beg. I didn't suspect anything since the previous TM contractor who came to install my phone line dressed similarly.

Once he was in the house, he looked around and attempted to fix the phone. He then send me up and down the house to ask me to check the upstairs phone, bring it up and down as part of his troubleshooting. I was starting to get angry actually as he didn't seem to know how to troubleshoot it systematically and also didn't bring some common tools such as a voltmeter/small screw drivers.

After about 30 odd minutes, he said he had to check the outside telekom pole to see if there are issues there. He left and didn't come back after that. I waited for an hour before I realized that my mobile phone and digital camera was missing. He was never seen again.

Fortunately, I had installed a CCTV camera just a few days back and manage to catch his face. I printed his picture out on a full A4 and immediately reported it to the police. An investigation is being carried out now.

When the real TM folks came on Monday evening, they checked and found my external cable to the telekom pole to be faulty somehow. The technician also told me that 5 other houses on my row had their phone lines cut. It became clear then that the guy had likely cut our phone lines so that he can try to con his way into our house to carry out his crime.

TM clarified that TM third party contractors maybe employed to install a new line but for faults, they are always TM employees which should come in a TM car and in TM blue jumpsuit. It is also safer to always ask to see the persons identification/authorisation card at the gate and calling the service provider (could be any , TM, Tenaga, Astro etc etc ) to confirm who they sent before letting them in.

The TM technician also recommended that the residences to put up grills at the ends of the backlanes to reduce accessibility to strangers and opportunists such as these.

So, please take note and take precautions in such cases.

Better safe than sorry!
(Source from blog.thestar.com.my)