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If Questar Gas Co. wants to treat its customers fairly -- or just wants to be prudent -- it will drop its hunt to charge customers for its own mistakes. The Utah Division of Public Utilities ought to pay heed to its name, and protect the public. It should not let the utility company off the hook for a $700,000 blunder.
For a decade, the company has installed transmitters, often called transponders, in homes and businesses. These send out electronic meter readings that are recorded by company trucks. This saves the company (and consumers) money by making meter-reading faster and more accurate than if performed by workers trudging from meter to meter. So far so good. But a couple of years ago, the company incorrectly installed transponders at 400 homes and 117 businesses. The devices reported only about half the gas that was actually used. Questar discovered the error, and earlier this year back-billed those customers for the gas they had actually used -- $1,200 on average. Talk about sticker shock. Customers howled, and they were right to do so. Yes, they did use the gas. But in all transactions, the seller is responsible for charging the right price. For example, say you're at the supermarket, and you see hamburger marked at $1 a pound. You pick up a package, take it home and cook up the hamburger. If the supermarket called the next day and said the packages were mislabeled and demanded that you come back to pay another $1 a pound, you'd laugh and hang up. And most of us would be pretty steamed if the Utah Division of Hamburger Regulation said we had to pay any part of that tab. After pondering customers' complaints, the Utah Division of Public Utilities told Questar it could back-bill those 500 customers for six months of gas and seek about $621,000 from the rest of its customers to help make up the difference. Questar would absorb only $98,000 of the loss. That's unconscionable. Questar should eat the whole amount. We consumers have to trust the company to accurately record how much natural gas we use, because it's not a commodity we can measure on our own. After all, if the customers knew how much their gas bills really were, they could have made adjustments to conserve. Instead, they're being treated as debtors. Utahns ought to be able to count on state oversight agencies to monitor the company's doings. The Division of Public Utilities has hinted that the Public Service Commission should consider ordering Questar to pick up at least some of the $621,000 shortfall that might otherwise be passed on to customers. Some? It should be all. It's the company's fault and the company's problem. The company picked the technology and installed it, so it has to live with the fallout. Besides, it's entirely within a modern company's capabilities to catch an under-billing like this much sooner. The company deserves to profit from the valuable services it provides. But it shouldn't seek to avoid the pain from its own mistakes. As a utility, Questar has to publicly document its costs, revenue and expenses. None of the items in any report that we could find is labeled, "Money we're allowed to grab from consumers when we goof up." The PSC will hold hearings on the issue starting Oct. 22. We urge the commission to make Questar pay for the underbilling. It's the fair thing to do. It's even the smart thing to do. Questar could reap a PR bonanza by stepping forward and saying: "Our mistake. Forget the money. We will redouble our efforts toward accuracy." The current approach carries the faint scent of bad hamburger. |
