Your daily Letter to the Columnist — Nov. 2, 2012
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She should buy stock in Roanoke Gas!
Thoroughly enjoyed the article — do you want to hear another outrage about Roanoke Gas?
We have been a Roanoke Gas customer since 1991. The only gas usage for the house is for our furnace. Our furnace has electronic ignition [no pilot light/no flame- 24/7]. We use natural gas from October/November up to March/April, then nothing.
BUT – we get a bill from them for $15 each month we have NO USAGE! They call it operations/maintenance charges. Conservatively calculating the months of non-usage at 7, seven months of no usage comes to one hundred and five dollars! ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE dollars a year for nothing!
We could get the service shut off in the spring and re-connected each fall for less than that! But if we do that, we have to give them a deposit equal to the three highest months of service [Dec/Jan/Feb] – which is almost the entire heating bill for the winter!
Estimate usage to be $650 for the three months in winter, add the deposit [another $650] plus a small amount for early and late winter and you’ll find we will have tied up $1300 for $650 worth of gas! AND they charge another $95 service charge to connect and reconnect.
Bureaucracy at its finest! You can’t win!
Kate P
ROANOKE
Side note from Dan: By the way, “You Can’t Win” is the title of a marvelous, turn-of-the-century book in the genre of hobo literature — a memoir of a boy who ran away from home and grew up in the culture of riding the rails and living life on the edge. The author was Jack Black.
November 2, 2012 - 1:30 PM
I can attest to the truth of what Kate P says. We received a letter from Roanoke gas telling us they were going to be running gas lines in our neighborhood and did we want gas run to our house. I called the number on the letter and explained that we did want gas – (I don’t like electric for cooking or drying my clothes, and we plan to install a gas tankless water heater) – but that we did not yet have the appliances to hook up. The man on the phone told me to wait then… he explained that they will run gas lines at no charge BUT there is a minimum monthly charge that we would have to pay whether we are using the utility or not. I opted to wait.
I understand the frustration, but is she not paying for infrastructure with those payments i.e. the cost of the pipes and all other items to keep the system running. Clearly when we pay for an item we are not paying just for the cost of that, but everything else that goes with it. Still $15/mo. seems a bit high for someone not using the product.
Additionally, take note that your locality (at least mine) slaps taxes on top of the “operations/maintenance charges.”
Or you could put in a gas hot water heater. That’s what we did. The gas hot water heater is cheaper to run plus you avoid the minimum bills in the summer.
They still have to maintain and repair lines in the summer, even when people don’t use the service for home heating. Just because you’re not consuming natural gas doesn’t mean the supplier suddenly has no operations costs associated with maintaining their distribution network.
Isn’t this like charging a toll for a road you’re not driving on?
I got another email about this column. Here it is:
“Dan, found your column om Roanoke Gas interesting. Decided to do a
little checking myself and below is a news release I found on Yahoo
finance yesterday evening. Very interesting!
“RGC Resources, Inc. Declares Dividend
Press Release: RGC Resources, Inc. – 16 hours ago
Email
Print
RELATED QUOTES
Symbol Price Change
RGCO 18.2199
ROANOKE, Va., Nov. 1, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Board of Directors
of RGC Resources, Inc. (RGCO), at its meeting on October 29, 2012,
declared a special dividend of $1.00 per share on the Company’s common
stock. The dividend will be paid on December 17, 2012 to shareholders
of record on November 30, 2012. John Williamson, Company President and
CEO, said, “Significantly lower gas costs have reduced the company gas
inventory financing needs and freed up previously deployed equity
capital, allowing for the dividend distribution of a portion of
retained earnings to shareholders.” He also said, “The dividend
payment would more appropriately align the Company’s capital structure
with regulatory expectations.”
RGC Resources, Inc. provides energy and related products and services
to customers in Virginia through its operating subsidiaries including
Roanoke Gas Company, Diversified Energy Company and RGC Ventures of
Virginia, Inc.
From time to time, the Company may publish forward-looking statements
relating to such matters as anticipated financial performance,
business prospects, technological developments, new products, research
and development activities and similar matters. The Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor for
forward-looking statements. In order to comply with the terms of the
safe harbor, the Company notes that a variety of factors could cause
the Company’s actual results and experience to differ materially from
the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the
Company’s forward-looking statements.”
So, on the same day as the $1.78 per month rate hike went into effect, the gas company declared a special dividend of a buck a share, because the price of gas is so low.
There are many things that trouble me. Roanoke gas is not one of them.
What exactly is a “hot water heater?” Isn’t it just called a water heater? Why would I need to heat hot water? It’s already hot, right? Like “ATM machine” (Automated Teller Machine machine) or “SAT test.”
Dobbs, I’d add…what the heck is “unsweetened tea”. Wouldn’t it just be…tea?
Exactly, Kristen. I had to drink my unsweetened iced tea cold, because my hot water heater doesn’t work. Also, I prefer my Long Island iced tea on the rocks.
Public utilities that people depend on for heat, cooking, electricity or water should not be entities with shareholders to enrich or executives with exorbitant compensation. We have a crazy way of looking at so many basics of life that make it that much harder for all of us but especially the poor.
While we are discussing correct usage… I’ve been intrigued by the language usage here in the valley. Baltimoreans are famous for their pronunciations and colloquialisms – and have several books written about it – but I have noticed that Roanokers have their own rules. They say “ink pen” and “plug it up” (as in plug in an appliance) and “poe-leece” and “am-bue-lance”? I’m sure there is more…
I’m with you, Sandi. Let’s remove the profit motive so the public utulity provider can focus on what’s important – providing reasonably priced service to it’s customers.
Lynda K, we also pronounce the name of our valley as if there were no ‘a’ in it. Ro-noke, instead of Ro-ah-noke, but I don’t know which is correct, or if they both are. We say ‘Pew-laski’, but I know a couple of folks who say, ‘Puh-laski’, emphasis on ‘las’. Then there’s Salem, or more accurately, Say-lum.
I knew a guy whose last name was Peery, but he pronounced it Perry. I told him, jokingly, he was saying it wrong. He said, “No, I’m not. It’s my name. If I say Peery is pronounced ‘jones’, then by golly, it is!” Needless to say, I called him Jones from then on.
“I knew a guy whose last name was Peery, but he pronounced it Perry.”
Me too. Art or Frank, or neither?
Contrasuzie..
Lets not forget B’yew-nuh Vista.
sandi sandi sandi dear PLEASE get over your obsession with other peoples money or how they make it. Jealousy is not a good characteristic.
Or BUCKanan.
Art:
Neither.
dobbs, I have to use my ‘PIN number’ to get cash out of the ATM machine.
Look at pammalapdog using a five-syllable word! Ain’t that somethin’!
pammala, your record for ignorance is unblemished. My “obsession” is for people not being ripped of for things they must have to survive.
Speaking of goofy pronunciations, it’s “REALTOR”. It has two syllables, not three. It has one “A”, not two.
Thank you.
your obsession, dear, is food….oh and quit talking with your mouth full.
#16 & 20 is this an a local Art Peery who passed away too young?
#25 Funny how anonymous bloggers feel completely confident insulting the looks of other posters. Something tells me there’s a reason we don’t know what pammalala looks like.
#25 BTW, pammie, this is pretty much as juvenile as you can get. You are little more than and infant.