Upper St. Clair woman encourages haggling over gas prices
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Cindy Golding, from Upper St. Clair, was shocked when she called her natural gas supplier, Dominion Peoples Plus, to switch to Dominion Peoples and received an offer to have her gas bill priced 42 percent lower than what she was being charged.
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Cynthia Golding is on a crusade.
It began when Ms. Golding, of Upper St. Clair, saw that her gas bill for November was $387; the highest it had ever been before then was $315.
"Oh well," she told herself. "It'll come down next month."
But the next month's bill was $521.
"I thought, 'Oh my God, I have a leak,'" she said.
She called Dominion Peoples Plus, her natural gas supplier since 2001, and learned that the jump in her gas bill was due, not to a leak, but to a price increase, to $15.99 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) that had taken effect July 1, just about the time that the wholesale price for natural gas reached its highest point of 2008.
She called her utility, Dominion Peoples, and discovered that their "price to compare" for gas was only $7.54 per mcf. She called Dominion Peoples Plus back and told them she intended to switch suppliers.
She says the Dominion Peoples Plus customer service representative told her that if she switched to Dominion Peoples she would incur an additional charge that would result in her paying $10.66 per mcf. She said the Dominion Peoples Plus customer service representative then offered her a price of $9.29. She accepted that price and kept Dominion Peoples Plus as her natural gas supplier.
She did two more things.
First, she called the state Public Utility Commission to complain. Her complaint to the PUC centered on the Dominion Peoples' representative not telling her about the additional charge (a gas adjustment charge), and the fact that she might never have known that she could negotiate her price with Dominion Peoples Plus if she had not called.
Second, she began telling everyone she knew that she had gotten her price for natural gas reduced just by making a phone call. The success stories began to mount.
Joan Kerling, also of Upper St. Clair and another Dominion Peoples Plus customer, called and was offered a price of $9.29 per mcf, down from $15.39.
Rozanne Wilson, of Monroeville, had her Dominion Peoples Plus price reduced to $10.45 per mcf, from $15.45.
Frank Stoy, of Washington, Pa., got his price reduced to 89 cents per hundred cubic feet, rather than $1.29 per ccf, by visiting the Web site for his supplier, IGS Energy.
While they all expressed pleasure about saving money, they also expressed perplexity or even anger about the way that they obtained those savings. Their common feeling is that if a lower price is available, customers should not have to call to obtain it.
Ms. Kerling said when she called, the customer service representative she spoke with suggested that she check back periodically to see if a new, lower price is available.
"I said, 'Why don't you just automatically lower it?'" she said.
Sonny Popowsky, the state's consumer advocate, said competitive suppliers, who typically offer long term agreements to provide gas at a fixed price, have good reason for not offering a lower price automatically to all customers.
"If you lock in a price for a year or two years, they will lock in a gas supply to serve you for that period of time," he said. "They can't wait and buy their gas on the spot market and hope that the price goes down. If the price goes up, you get the benefit. If the price goes down, you have to stay with your fixed price."
Ms. Golding and friends are proving that the "have to" is somewhat theoretical.
A customer always can call to see if a lower price is available, said Dominion Peoples Plus spokesman Dan Donovan. But calling does not guarantee a lower price. "Sometimes we say, 'No, we don't have another price,' because we couldn't buy gas any cheaper."
He emphasized that the price that a customer pays is "individually negotiated between us and the customer. We both agree on a period of time, we both agree on a rate." But "it's not a rate determined by a commission. It's a price between two parties."
As for lower prices becoming available after that deal has been made, Mr. Donovan compared it to buying detergent for $2, using it for a while, then noticing that the same detergent is on sale for $1.50.
"Are you ticked off about it?" he said.
Ms. Golding said she is angry, not for her own sake, but for the sake of others.
"I have no problem paying any bill," she said. "I don't want senior citizens to not buy food and pay $15.99 [per mcf] to heat their whole house because nobody's telling them" that a lower rate is available.
One way for consumers to keep track of trends in pricing among competitive suppliers is by visiting the Office of Consumer Advocate's Web site, which offers a guide to natural gas choice (view a PDF).
While this may be the season for customers of competitive suppliers to negotiate price reductions, Barbara Stern, of Shaler, discovered that this is not necessarily the time to sign up with such a supplier. A Dominion Peoples customer, she checked with Agway Energy Services and Dominion Peoples Plus to see if either could offer her a fixed price that would be lower than the $7.54 that is Dominion Peoples' price to compare.
"Based on the information I had, Dominion Peoples was much less expensive," she said.
Agway Energy Services
www.agwayenergy.com
1-888-98-AGWAY
(Serves Columbia, Dominion customers)
Direct Energy
www.directenergy.com
1-888-734-0741
(Serves Columbia customers)
Dominion Peoples Plus
retail.dom.com
1-800-779-0538
(Serves Columbia, Dominion, Equitable customers)
IGS Energy
www.igsenergy.com
1-800-280-4474
(Serves Columbia customers)
MxEnergy.com Inc.
www.mxenergy.com
1-800-785-4373
(Serves Columbia customers)
Shipley Energy
www.shipleyenergy.com
1-800-839-1849
(Serves Columbia customers)
First Published February 25, 2009 12:00 am
