Marketer billing for overlooked gas charges Georgia Natural Gas Services won't say how many customers will be affected. Matthew C. Quinn - Staff Thursday, November 2, 2000

In the latest natural gas deregulation glitch, Georgia's leading natural gas marketer is back-billing some customers for uncollected charges that date back months.

At issue, said Georgia Natural Gas Services President Stephen Gunther, are so-called base charges that were not billed to some customers.

In the past, he said, the company did not bill customers whose meters were not read in a given month. When meters were read and bills for multiple months sent, those bills did not include base charges.

Georgia Natural Gas recently discovered the oversight and is adding the charges to bills for October and November service. Gunther declined to say how many customers will be billed for such charges.

Base charges run about $22 for the average residential consumer and do not change much from month to month.

Base charges include monthly charges from Atlanta Gas Light Co. for distributing gas and an ancillary service charge added by Georgia Natural Gas Services. They are separate from gas consumption charges, which are calculated from monthly meter readings by Atlanta Gas Light personnel.

Georgia Natural Gas, which has more than 500,000 customers, and Atlanta Gas Light, which distributes gas to 1.5 million homes and businesses, are corporate affiliates.

Gunther said Georgia Natural Gas will no longer delay bills when meters are not read. Instead, bills will be sent for base charges only. Gas consumption charges will be billed when meters are read.

Billing has been the most persistent problem in Georgia's 2-year-old deregulated natural gas market. Most marketers have had problems of one kind or another.

In response to consumer complaints, the Public Service Commission is considering rules that would forgive bills more than 90 days late. A public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. In an attempt to head off that proposal, Georgia Natural Gas promised the PSC in August that problems with late bills would be cleared up by Sept. 15. But Gunther said that was a "separate issue'' from the problem with base charges.

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-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), November 02, 2000