Office Center, Inc.: Tips You Can Use: Beware of Toner Pirates

Beware of Toner Pirates
The call sounds legitimate enough and they seem to know what equipment you have. There is about to be a huge price increase on your copy supplies but if you act now you can save a bunch of money. You are about to be scammed by what is known as a "toner pirate" or "toner phoner".

One of the main reasons we are informing you of this is because these scam artist many times represent themselves as local office supply dealers. One important thing to know is we have never found it necessary to "promote" or "hard sell" our copier products. We do not call our customers and solicit their toner business. It is very simple; when you need supplies for your copier we trust you will order them.

Favorite targets of these thieves are churches. Many times churches rely on volunteer help or part time staff and are more vulnerable as a target. They also prey on day-care centers, nursing homes and small businesses and use carefully worded scripts to trick victims into thinking the call is coming from the victim's regular office supply company.

Some of the horror stories include being charged five times more than your local office supply would charge. Getting off-brand incorrect supplies if you get any supplies at all. Another version of this scheme is the "bogus invoice" scheme where you are being billed for supplies you never got or never ordered.

A customer who has their machine on contract with us most recently reported this scam to us. They knew it was a scam because their toner is included in their contract.

Protect yourself in the following ways. First ask for their name and phone number. You will find them very reluctant to provide this info. Ask them for the model number of the machine they are calling about. They may guess Sharp correctly. That isn't hard we have been Sharp Dealers in this area for over 30 years. Ask them "which" Sharp they are calling about. Ask them whom they spoke to on last order. These callers can get pretty obnoxious and just won't take no for an answer sometimes just hanging up the best recourse.

Also please call us if anyone saying they represent us contacts you with an offer for toner, paper or other supplies and you suspect their intentions.

pdf version for printing or distribution