Answering common consumer questions: jury duty scam calls, home warranty letters

DENVER — Each week, Steve On Your Side consumer investigator Steve Staeger opens his email inbox and shares common problems that might not merit a full story but are still worth your time.

Tad from Denver:  I keep getting voicemails (however, my phone never rings!) from some character, the name always changes, the very first being someone named Michael McCray, professing to be from the Denver County Sheriff’s Office, regarding me missing a jury summons. A phone number is left, as well as an email address and website, yet the phone number (which is different this time from last time!) will not connect, and it was a 970 area code?! Last time, I did attempt to email, I received quite a rude, not to mention very unprofessional reply! And the website listed looks fantastic, but I cannot raise anybody on the chat service, and it always really seems like it’s only mission is to obtain my information! I feel that it is a scam, yet I am really worried about the consequences of possibly missing a jury summons.”

Steve: Tad’s right to be skeptical here.  This is one of the most common scams we hear about each week.

Tad sent along a recording of the phone call. Here are a few things we noticed:

First, the message begins with the officer identifying themselves as Lt. Justin Brambleton from the Denver Sheriff Department. Then at the end of the message, the officer identifies himself as Lt.Michael McCray.  That should be a red flag in and of itself.

But the Denver Sheriff’s Office told Steve On Your Side they don’t have lieutenants. And what’s more, they don’t handle jury duty. They also have nothing to do with federal court, which is what the caller told Tad he was calling about.

I say this often enough, it’s in the running for the epitaph on my eventual tombstone: Cops would never call you and ask for money.

Maro Casparian, spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney’s fraud division, has been practically screaming the same from the rooftops. She actually called me a few weeks ago to ask me to once again get the word out about this scam.

“The fact is, no one will ever get a call saying they’ve missed a jury duty and that there’s a warrant out for the response for their lack of responding to jury duty,” Casparian told me this week. “That is not how warrants work. That is not how jury duty works. And no one the Denver Sheriff’s Office, Denver Police Department, will ever ask you for money to get out of anything.”

She said her fraud investigators have once again been getting a lot of calls about this scam, which she said appears to be a bit cyclical – almost as if scammers work their way around the country and currently have their pin on Denver.

“We are doing everything we can, other than shouting from the rooftops,” Casparian said. “We’re speaking to media as where we can we’ve sent out notices. Denver courts has a warning on their website. And I’m asking the public that even if you don’t think you’re going to get scammed, just tell everyone you know that this is a current scam. The only way we’re going to get this out is with people spreading the word.”

Steve from Centennial: Okay… actually Steve Staeger. But I get a lot of emails about this, and I got a letter in the mail claiming that I haven’t acted on my home’s warranty and could be liable for a lot of costs. It was scary. And listed my mortgage company. What should I do?

Steve: Fantastic question from a handsome gentleman. I kid…

I posted a thread to social media about this letter the night I opened it. The letter said it was my “final notice” from the home warranty division and listed my mortgage company right there on the envelope.  It exhaustively told me my home warranty was either expired or about to expire and I only had a short time left to renew it.

Here’s the thing – I don’t have a home warranty. And my mortgage company doesn’t require me to have one. None of them do.

Home warranties cover the costs of the things inside your home that might be pricey to replace – your appliances and HVAC systems. You basically pay monthly then have reduced costs or no costs when it comes time to replace something.

But we’ve covered problems with home warranties in the past. Jennifer from Centennial had a warranty for her dishwasher but in the end only got $75 when it was time to replace it. The Federal Trade Commission has some tips on what to consider if you want to purchase a home warranty.

Some consumer advocacy groups have suggested self-insurance for appliances and HVAC may be a better option – essentially taking what you would pay for a home warranty plan monthly and putting the money in a savings account instead.

It’s also a good idea to research the company you’re about to do business with. In fine print at the bottom of that letter, I found the home warranty company’s name. When I looked that company up on the BBB I found an F rating with a big warning about their advertising practices.

Mike from Denver: Here’s a question that’s both timely and should not take long to do. Branch from abutting neighbor’s tree broke and fell into my back yard. Looks like damage is minimal, but the branch is so large I cannot move it, nor do i have power tools needed to cut it up. Neighbor says cleanup is my problem under Colorado law, regardless of the location from which branches fell.  Is this true?  

Steve: Great question, Mike.  I actually had a tougher time than expected looking into this.

One real estate attorney I know told me there’s no black and white statute about what to do if this happens. Obviously, if the tree causes damage on your property and there’s a history pointing to negligence by the neighbor for not caring for it, you might have a case.

But she suggested there’s kind of a good neighbor understanding here. If a neighbor knows their tree caused a problem, the nice thing to do would be to offer to take care of it.

This article from AAA Living suggests if the tree causes no damage in your yard, it’s likely your responsibility to clean it up.

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