Complaint Review: SCANA

I had a very bad experience with Scana that any customer should be aware of. Their natural gas pricing policies are very deceptive and cost me $50 on my last bill. Their pricing practices are presently under investigation by the Public Service Commission, but I doubt I will get my $50 back. Here's what they did to me.

I signed up for a 12 month, fixed rate plan at $0.899 per therm on January 1, 2007. An easy date to remember for shopping around to get new rates the following year so I thought. My first bill from Scana was billed to me on the 4th of January it seemed odd to have a 3 day bill, but I figured they just wanted to get me on their billing cycle date.

When I received my bill for December 2007, I noticed that instead of the 89.9 per therm rate, I was charged $1.279 per therm. When I called to have them fix this obvious error, they stated that the contract was only for 12 billings, not 12 months. Since they billed me Jan 4, they said my 12th bill was for November, and the ripoff rate applied to December was valid. When I complained to the supervisor and demanded they honor the 12 month fixed rate contract, they used the billings weasel wording to justify charging me 43% more per therm for December. They wouldn't even give me the published variable rate for December. They told me basically to go pound sand and threatened me with collection agents and bad credit reports.

On the gas marketer websites and even the Public Service Commission website, the fixed rate plans are ALL quoted as 12 month plans. Scana uses billings and months interchangeably, in order to charge the last month of a fixed rate plan at a much higher rate by billing immediately after you sign up. This much higher rate is not the going rate it is for EXISTING customers only, and nearly 20% higher than the published PSC rates.

Both Georgia Natural Gas and Scana are being investigated for this existing customer rate that is automatically billed and at a much higher than the going rate. They use this to dupe unsuspecting existing customers who don't scrutinize their bills. Only now (since December) are these existing customer ripoff rates published.

Wil
marietta, Georgia
U.S.A.