Georgia Natural Gas Services (GNGS) has equaled or even may haveovertaken Scana as Georgia’s leading marketer in terms of pipelinecapacity share, a GNGS executive said on Monday. With 30% of thepipeline capacity, GNGS is in line to be assigned another 120,000customers when the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC)determines random assignment tomorrow.

“From the numbers released this month, our research hasindicated that we’ve overtaken Scana as the No. 1 marketer in thestate. We’ve got 30% of the pipeline cap share (capacity share) andScana has 27%,” said Clif Payne, vice president of GNGS. He notedthat capacity share is directly equated with market share.

“As we’ve gotten close to the Aug. 11 date, our sign-ups havereally taken off. We’ve just reinforced our tactics and our localpresence has been key. As a result, we’ve signed up somewhere inthe neighborhood of 300,000 people through the end of July, and oursign-up rate for the first week in August has been very good,”Payne said.

Scana, which previously had claimed to be the owner of the mostswitches, said it now has no idea where it stands in the marketingpecking order. “We are swamped with accounts that need to betallied, so I don’t know where we stand,” said Roger Schrum, aScana spokesman. “I do know we are right around 300,000.”

As of last Friday, just over one million people had switchedfrom Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) to one of the 20 marketers in thestate, leaving roughly 400,000 customers to be randomly assigned bythe GPSC. “That was more than we expected, which is too bad,”Robert Baker, a GPSC Commissioner said, referring to the customerswho haven’t switched. “At the rate we were moving a couple ofmonths ago, I thought it would be less, like in the 200,000-250,000range. The less random assignment involved, the less confusion. Nowthe whole ordeal will take longer to process and more problemscould arise.”

One problem that has already arisen is the alleged slamming, orunauthorized switching of customers, by United Gas Management, oneof the marketers in the state. Last week, the marketer was citedfor violations by the GPSC and a hearing was scheduled for Octoberto settle the situation. United Gas Management has signed over50,000 customers from AGL.

Although United Gas has made no formal response to the GPSC, thecompany has said it is innocent and it hopes to resolve the matter.If found guilty United potentially could be fined $15,000 for eachviolation. The GPSC has received 230 complaints about United’ssales tactics.

“We were seeing far more slamming complaints than anybodyexpected. After investigating the claims, it became clear thatwrongdoing had occurred,” Baker said. “It is obvious from whatwe’ve heard that United either lost control of things on thegrassroots level of their campaign or they were turning a blind eyeto the situation entirely.”

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