Complaint Review: Southern California Gas Company

SoCal Gas management should really take a look at the following incident that occurred recently because it’s very strange that the they would come on the wrong day to read the meter and then bother the customer on the scheduled day. If something shady is going on, they should investigate and report it to the Los Angeles Police Department:

The meter reader came a week before the scheduled date, which was very strange because they’ve never done that before. Since, there’ve been reports of fake meter readers burglarizing homes, we didn’t let him in. After he left, I called SoCal Gas to report the incident. The explanation that I got from the customer rep was nothing more than excuses on why he might be there on the wrong day. I told the rep that he was definitely there to read the meter because he left a note that said “Unable to Read the Gas Meter”. The rep didn't know what to say and was quiet. I told him to please note the incident on the account, which he did.

A week later (on the scheduled day), it was the same guy but this time he came to the front door. He banged on the door really hard and was shouting “Gas man!”. He wanted to know if the dog was restrained, I told him yes and there was no need to ask me because all the other readers know the routine. He said that he's following policy and needed to check with me first.

I called SoCal Gas after he left to find out if this was true or not. All the previous meter readers never bothered us and did their job quickly and quietly. Again, the customer rep didn’t know what to say, the reps only excuse was that their dept doesn’t have access to meter reading dept’s system. The information the rep was able to find was a memo that was posted a couple of days after my first complaint about an aggressive dog. I told the rep that the person who posted that memo was lying because it wasn’t true.

From the meter reader’s attitude, I suspect that he was either harassing us because I complained a week before or he was probing our home to burglarize it. Either way, he was obviously playing dumb because all the previous meter readers did their job professionally.