A question posed by many readers:

I was going to stick with Dominion Peoples Plus as my natural gas supplier. I am an Equitable Gas customer. I am paying Dominion Peoples Plus $14.56 per mcf (thousand cubic feet). I was willing to hold in for a while at this price, but not if Equitable has a "price to compare" of $11.44. Is this the time to switch back to Equitable? It seems too expensive with the gas-choice company now.

A: If you are an Equitable Gas customer who has picked Dominion Peoples Plus as your gas supplier, here's a real money-saving opportunity. Call Dominion Peoples Plus at 1-800-533-1259. Tell the representative that you are considering switching back to Equitable Gas Co. You will be given a new, lower price of $13.82 per mcf. You will be able to lock in that price until September 2006. If you do not call and ask for this new price, you will not get it.

Kim Kujbus of Dominion Peoples Plus is not excited about having that price published in my column because she says, "I can't guarantee how long that price will be available. We are offering this price in order to hold onto our customers." So call Dominion Peoples Plus today.

Now the bad news. Many people might have decided it's time to jump ship and go back to Equitable Gas Co. after last week's column. I wrote, "Equitable Gas Co. has a 'price to compare' or a supply charge of $11.44." That is the price presented on Equitable's Web site, but that number, in my mind, is misleading. It should be $13.15. That's the figure you'll find on the natural gas shopping list on the Web site of the Office of Consumer Advocate.

Equitable's David Spigelmyer told me that Equitable decided to change the way it posts its "price to compare" on the Web.

"Our prices always look so much higher than the other gas companies," he explained.

To correct this, Equitable decided to remove its $1.71 per mcf demand charge from its price to compare and add it to its distribution charge. The distribution charge on the Web site now reads $4.94 per mcf instead of $3.23 per mcf. That's not really the new distribution price, so it won't show up on your bill that way, but it does make the "price to compare" look a lot better on the Web site.

What I find so mind-numbing about this is that Equitable didn't tell suppliers about the change. That means that Dominion Peoples Plus is still including that $1.71 per mcf demand charge in its "price to compare," so consumers are left comparing apples to pears.

Consumers are left comparing Dominion Peoples Plus' $14.56 per mcf, for example, to Equitable's $11.44. Remove the demand charge from Dominion Peoples Plus and the comparison becomes Dominion Peoples Plus $12.85 to Equitable's $11.44. Because Equitable customers who never switched to a gas supplier have to pay a gas cost adjustment charge of $1.11, the final price to compare is $12.85 from Dominion Peoples Plus to $12.55 for Equitable.

For Equitable to change the rules of the game now without letting gas suppliers in on the change makes no sense for consumers.

The Public Utility Commission said on Friday that it is investigating Equitable's action.

If you switched from Dominion Peoples Plus back to Equitable based on Equitable's new and confusing price to compare, and if Equitable holds you to it, call the PUC at 1-888-782-3228 and complain.