Alva Review-Courier -

Friday morning during the Alva Chamber of Commerce Community Coffee, we heard some updates and some information on coming events. Since a lot of people in the area are OG&E customers, I thought you’d be interested in comments by Paul Weigel of Woodward who is the community affairs manager for OG&E in northwest Oklahoma.

We often discuss scams in this column, and Weigel talked about those affecting OG&E. In the last couple of months, OG&E sent a notice about scams to their customers.

“We are surprised at how sophisticated the scam artists have become,” said Weigel. “We didn’t realize it until one of our employees received one of these calls.”

He said the caller told the employee her residential bill had a past due balance of $600. The caller wanted her to go out and purchase a prepaid Visa card then call back with the number. He threatened that if she didn’t do this, her electric service would be cut off at 4 p.m.

“Well, first of all a $600 past due balance on a residential account is highly unusual, Weigel said. He recommends you know what your bills usually run. Then if you get such a call, you can tell them they are wrong.

The OG&E employee waited a while and then called back. Weigel said, “What really surprised us was when you call our customer service number, we have a recording. Press one for so and so, press two for so and so. They played that recording. We don’t think the automatic portion of it where you press a certain number was actually functioning. Just they played that recording to where it sounded pretty real.”

After the employee talked with the man for a while, she let him know she was an OG&E employee. He responded, I figured as much. You weren’t creative enough in your lies. I’m good at it. I do it every day.”

Weigel said the employee talked with him a little more and finally he said, “Well my suggestion to you is to find a fast-moving truck and jump in front of it.” And then he hung up on her.

“So please, please, please, tell your friends, tell your relatives, tell anybody that will listen. Any reputable company including OG&E does not operate on prepaid Visa cards. We will not call you and tell you if you do not pay we will cut you off today.” said Weigel. “Now, you might get a call from us saying you have a past due balance, and you need to take care of it. But we’re not going to tell you to go get a card and call us back. We do have the automatic dialing where we will notify our customers if they have a past due balance, but it’s not demanding payment right then and there.”

He warned that OG&E is not the only company being targeted by scammers. Other utilities and other companies have also experienced this problem. He said the scammers seem to particularly target churches.

OG&E Rate Review

Weigel also spoke about the OG&E rate increase proposal being reviewed by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. “Most of those costs that we’re asking recovery for were mandated by the federal government. We didn’t really have a choice,” he said. “They (federal government) said, “You have to do this or basically shut those plants down.’

“We hear a lot in the news about different sides having different opinions about that but again, it was mandated by the federal government. If every dollar that we’re asking for in that rate review was granted, our bills would still be lower than the 2014 level. That’s because of increased fuel costs and the lowering of the income tax that took place a couple of years ago.

“I just wanted everybody to know we’re not trying to squeeze every penny out of our customers we can. We are just asking for the ability to recover those expenses that we had to implement.”

New Street Lights

Alva has some new street lights along Oklahoma Boulevard (US64). Weigel said people may have noticed them because they look different.

“We are commencing a program to replace all our street lights and security lights with LED lights. And the main reason is we can’t get high pressure sodium and mercury vapor bulbs any more. They’re not available to us,” said Weigel. OG&E is not replacing all the bulbs at once. The transition will be more gradual.

“We are replacing the existing mercury and high pressures as they fail. If the bulb burns out, if there’s a problem with the fixture, we’ll put the LED in,” he said. However, if the problem is a fuse or some other issue, the bulb won’t get replaced with an LED.

“One thing you will notice about the LED is it’s a different light. It’s a better quality light, if you will. It’s a more natural light,” Weigel said. The high pressure sodium has an orange light so it looks different. He also said the globe of the high pressure sodium bulb comes down below the fixture and it glows. However, the LED’s don’t show that way. Weigel said the trend is “doing away with light pollution.” In fact, the light is so focused it may appear the streetlight is not working, but when you get closer you can see it’s on.

Talking Tombstones Correction

This week I received an email from Romily Estell who wanted to correct some information I wrote about one of the characters portrayed in the Talking Tombstones tour. Estell’s grandmother, Marydoris Kirkbride Cutter Powers, is the youngest daughter of Col. “Candy” Bob and Pearl Kirkbride. At the age of 98, she now lives with Estill in Oklahoma City. She keeps up with Alva by reading the newspapers.

When I wrote the tombstone tour article published in the May 1 Newsgram, I said that Candy Bob was a poetry writer. Marydoris wanted to correct this information to make sure the correct author gets proper credit. The poems were written by Mrs. Marjorie Sawyer Munson about Bob’s larger than life stories. Mrs. Munson’s book is entitled “Muleshoe Ballads of Oklahoma Bob.” It was copyrighted in 1944. Mrs. Powers believes some of Mrs. Munson's family is living in Alva, and she wants to make sure her work is acknowledged.