UnionGas – regulated utility shuts off service WITHOUT NOTICE.

This a story of how UnionGas disconnected my natural gas service WITHOUT NOTICE.

This morning we received a notice on our front door that our gas had been disconnected. We were home at the time but the gas guy just hung the notice on the door AFTER turning the gas off. Stunned, I called UnionGas. They told me that I hadn’t paid in 6 months. Stunned again, I looked into my payment history and sure enough I hadn’t paid. I thought I was paying, and had absolutely no reason to believe I hadn’t been paying because, well, they GAVE ME NO NOTICE. Simple solution, pay up? Nope. Now that the gas has been disconnected, I will be without an essential utility for a minimum of 5 days.

This is outrageous. As a regulated, essential utility, they should be required to make every effort to contact the customer PRIOR to shutoff. I had been paying monthly for 4.5 years without a problem until the cancelled their ePost service (which is how I pay almost all my bills). That’s when the problem started. They say they tried to call, but they had the wrong number. They cite the on-bill notice – on the bills which I hadn’t been seeing anymore. Best I got was a notice saying my online bill was available. No email OR snail mail saying, you are now overdue. Nothing to tell me my gas would be disconnected. Fair warning? Bullshit. They visit the house every month to read the meter. If all other communications fail, they still have an opportunity to leave a monthly notice on my door. Clearly they can because they did just that… AFTER they disconnected my gas.

This is an epic fail in so many ways. On my part this slipped through my otherwise solid bill/accounting management. On their they blew it in terms of customer service, billing system integration, and responsibility as an essential utility.

UnionGas you suck and you are getting away with it because you are a regulated utility. What options do I really have?