I’m sure you have one or two in your circle of e-friends, well-meaning people who forward you via email every scam under the sun. There seems to be no stopping them.
Sadly, some of them, perhaps most of them, appear to be part of the anti-vaxxer/anti-masker movement as well, but that’s a whole other story.
In my case, I receive emails from a particular correspondent several times a week. Most of the time I only glance at the subject line and don’t actually open the full message, so outlandish is the claim in that line. In nearly all cases the message is simply a forwarded post, and very frequently the only content is a link to a YouTube video.
Recently, I just couldn’t resist a particular subject line: “BREAKING: New tech can cut your electricity bill in half!” it proclaimed. This simply had “scam” written all over it, right up there with claims of secret technologies buried by the oil companies to inhibit improvements to fuel consumption by internal combustion engines.
As a physics teacher I’ve always felt a duty to do my best to dispel certain myths and scams. Although this one is currently making the rounds, I presume it has been seen before, and that it will continue surfacing.
In the case of the email forwarded to me, the contents were very basic: a raw URL with the key part having the official-sounding consumersdigestdaily.com (registered in 2020), another line with the URL buried in descriptive text about cutting one’s electric bill, and an image proclaiming the same thing and linking to the scam URL.
This particular variant is called the PowerVolt, perhaps designed to sound like the Elon Musk Powerwall battery and solar panel system for homes. There must be significant money behind this scam, as pretty much the entire first page of Google search results on the key word “PowerVolt” is filled with what appear to be legitimate reviews. They aren’t! Not a single one of them.
Cut your electricity bill in half? Don’t fall for the PowerVolt scam. As in many frauds of this nature, the name of Nikola Tesla is invoked. It is based on the myth that many of Tesla’s greatest inventions were supposedly confiscated by the U.S. government or its agents and subsequently used to develop everything from anti-gravity devices to death rays.
How does it work? The claim is that you simply plug in the palm-sized device, preferably into an outlet near your circuit breaker panel, and “within a few days, it will begin to make efficient use of your energy.”
Particularly galling is that one of the “reviews” for the PowerVolt device appears under the otherwise respected AP logo. (It seems the Associated Press has a pay-for-article service where this sort of thing is posted, no questions asked. Shame on the AP for benefitting from complete nonsense.)
One of the graphics accompanying the scam page shows a purported electrical bill of $201.42 reduced to $16.91. Let me save you the trouble of reading about, or falling for it, with these excerpts.
- “It’s called PowerVolt and its tech was originally created by no other than the legendary Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist, Nikola Tesla.”
- “Initially it was concealed from the general public because it offered average families the opportunity to save on their monthly energy costs. PowerVolt is a small, compact, affordable, and easy-to-use plug-in unit that stops unnecessary power from entering the electrical cables and overloading the network.”
- “PowerVolt is your power company’s worst nightmare. They have been trying to hide PowerVolt from the everyday consumer and have even banned it in retail shops.”
- “Big Energy is threatened by this device and its potential to cut into profits.”
- “Make sure you get yours while you can, due to recent media attention and mounting pressure from Big Energy, these handy little gadgets may become impossible to find in the near future.”
As if that weren’t enough to convince you, the document claims that “As a bonus, your standard blender, microwave, vacuum, or any other household appliance may last longer.”
It’s all nonsense.
I spoke to a couple of electrical engineers about this hoax. They had both encountered versions of it previously and said the device consists of nothing more than a capacitor and a few LED lights. The capacitor may smooth a little noise ripple on the electrical sine wave but nothing that will result in any savings on your electrical energy bill.
I like the warranty wording in the fake review: a refund if you return the $40 item within 30 days of order placement. It then says you must wait a full billing cycle, which in B.C. is two months, to see the benefits of the device.
You can be sure the item isn’t arriving within 30 days, and there’s no chance you will be getting your money back if you fall for this scam. Stay away!
Too bad Tesla isn’t able to collect on the millions raked in by hucksters invoking his name.
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