Thinking about changing natural gas providers?

The Georgia Public Service Commission has devised a new score card that may help. In an effort to provide an additional resource, PSC has released score cards comparing all 18 natural gas marketers by the volume of consumer complaints received.

The score cards can be found on the PSC web site, www.psc.state.ga.us. They list the percentage of complaints received for every 10,000 customers that a particular marketer serves in Georgia.

Complaints are broken down into three categories: billing, service and deceptive marketing practices, which include “slamming,” or switching customers without obtaining permission first.

“By posting these score cards on the commission's web page, it is our intention to arm consumers with more information about the newly deregulated market that can be used in arriving at a decision which marketer to choose,” said PSC Chairman Stan Wise. “Further, by making this information so readily available to the public, it is our hope that marketers will continue to appreciate the need to run clean and efficient operations in this state,” he added.

While the scoring is based upon the total number of complaints, the PSC recognizes that a gas marketer may not be at fault in any given instance, said Wise. Such a determination is made only after a final investigation is complete.

Under the Natural Gas Marketing Act of 1997, some 1.4 million consumers successfully moved from the incumbent natural gas provider, Atlanta Gas Light Company, to one of the 18 certified natural gas marketers.