Grinch-like scammers victimize St. Peter’s

By David F. Rooney

The Grinch is alive and well and living under a rock somewhere from whence he torments St. Peter’s Anglican Church — and other folks across the province.

“Someone pirated our phone number (and many others across the province) to use for telephone sales,” says Lay Minister Cathleen Busch.

She said that about three month ago she and other parishioners noticed that when they attempted to phone St. Peter’s number — 250-837-3275 — the phone acted as though it had a lot of messages on its voice mail service. Calls to the number or through the physical telephone at the church went nowhere,

“It was a really bad situation,” Cathleen said.

Then people began receiving calls from 250-837-3275 that were purportedly from telemarketing firms. You’d think that Telus could track these miscreants down… but no, they apparently can’t.

“Telus is finding this a major problem and cannot seem to solve it,” Cathleen said. “Our solution was to get cell phones – one for (Rev. Dan Meakes) and one for the Goodwill Store. The numbers are 1-250-463-2475 for (Rev. Dan) and 1-250-463-3729 for the Goodwill Store.

The Current is waiting for Telus to respond to a few questions about this situation. Shawn Hall of Telus’ Media Relations Department thought this was “an odd thing” and promised to look into it. We’ll follow up with another story as soon as we have some answers from Telus.

In the meantime, Cathleen said parishioners and others interested in attending St. Peter’s Christmas services should be aware that they are at 8 pm on Christmas Eve and at 10 am on Christmas Day. The Carols and Lessons service will be held at 10 am on Sunday, December 28.