Georgia’s leading natural gas marketer, Georgia Natural Gas Co.,has been back-billing “several thousand” customers for charges thatdate back as far as a year, according to officials with the GeorgiaPublic Service Commission. That news comes as the PSC deferredconsideration until Nov. 20 of proposed new rules which wouldrequire marketers to provide efficient billing to customers.

The PSC said it had obtained an Oct. 30 confidential companymemo written on SouthStar Energy Services/Georgia Natural Gasletterhead, which reportedly said, “approximately 41,000 accountsneed resolution to finalize the audit and billing improvementplans.” The memo continued, “these are accounts that for somereason did not bill 100% of the applicable base charges.”

The memo also provided a script for customer service personnelto use for complaining customers, which reads: “Georgia Natural Gashas conducted a thorough audit to ensure that each customer hasbeen billed correctly. In addition, we will never bill a customerfor more than 12 base charges in one calendar year.”

SouthStar Energy, which does business as Georgia Natural Gas inGeorgia, is an alliance of AGL Resources Inc., Dynegy Inc. andPiedmont Natural Gas Co. Georgia Natural Gas serves more than500,000 customers, and the back-billing accounts are being done onaccounts missing up to eight monthly base charges, includingmonthly charges from Atlanta Gas Light for distributing gas andother services.

According to Georgia Natural Gas, customers billed for eightmonths-base charges would have up to four months to pay. PSCCommissioner Bobby Baker said that Georgia Natural Gas did not billcustomers for meters not read in a certain month. Instead, when themeters were read and the multiple charges were sent, the bills didnot include base charges.

The PSC is set to discuss a proposed rule authored by Baker onNov. 20, which would forgive bills more than 90 days late and putthe burden on marketers to provide efficient billing. Marketers inthe state are opposed to the proposal. PSC also may rule on the twolatest applications to enter the Georgia market as early as Nov.21. The New Power Company and PowerTrust.com both have requestedentrance to Georgia’s two-year-old deregulated market, and wouldboth use the Internet to market electricity and natural gas.

Georgia now has 12 certified marketers, down from 21 at thestart of deregulation two years ago. Three suppliers have declaredbankruptcy (see NGI, Sept. 4). Three marketers, including GeorgiaNatural Gas, Scana Energy and Shell Energy, control 85% ofGeorgia’s deregulated market, now numbering about 1.5 million homesand businesses.

Carolyn Davis, Houston

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