Welcome to what I will call the "Grand Opening" of BBB serving Central, Coastal and Southwest's interactive blog.  Yes, I said INTERACTIVE.  One of the great things about BBB is that it's a medium for you as consumers to be able to get valuable information and create a dialogue with us.  That being said, I welcome your comments and questions on every post I make here and I promise I will read and most likely respond to each and every one.

You might be asking yourself, "I get all the press releases that BBB sends out, so why should I read the blog too?"  A great question, and the answer is that throughout the day, we run across things in our offices that aren't quite press release material, but are topical and informative for people to know.  This blog is where you can come to get that information.  Here is a great example...

Below is an e-mail a consumer received and forwarded to us as suspicious and just wanted to know if it was a scam.

I am Engr. David Zuma, I work with the Energy Department of South Africa as an engineer. I have been directed to contact you after due consideration to assist us in a proposition. This deal, we will make a fortune. So if you are interested please reply with your Full Name and Telephone number and I will contact you with more information.
Contact me via my email address.

 I get things like this forwarded to me ALL THE TIME.  There are many versions of this  scam, but they all are formatted the same.  Basically you receive an e-mail like the one  above or you may even get a letter in your mailbox.  It promises a large sum of money  because of this business endeavor or it could be that you are somehow the beneficiary  of millions of dollars from some royal family in a random country.

Trust me, I would love to stumble across some long lost filthy rich person from a random country who wanted to just give me a ton of money, but that's probably not going to happen so just recognize that really what these people are trying to do is get you to contact them so they can get personal information from you and steal your identity.  With the economy in the state that it is in, an offer like this may widen your eyes, but just use a little common sense, and it will go a long way to keeping your good name safe.