40,000 swamp NIPSCO phones to lock in gas rates

By Dave Orrick / Staff Writer

MERRILLVILLE -- In a baffling and overwhelming response to a weakly marketed program, an estimated 40,000 NIPSCO customers swamped the utility's phone system this weekend, officials said Monday.

Apparently fueled by word-of-mouth reports that the end of the month spelled doom for their gas bills, the customers of Northern Indiana Public Service Co. often waited on hold for hours Saturday and Sunday -- and perhaps Monday and today -- to sign up for a program designed to freeze or cap a portion of their bills.

The response completely blind-sided the utility and is believed to have set a record for non outage-related calls.

"We can't account for the sudden spike in interest," NIPSCO spokesman Larry Graham said. "There's been no promotion on the part of the company recently. (The volume of calls) is similar to a severe storm, and due to the fact that we have smaller staff on weekend nights -- we opened up all available phone lines -- but we still couldn't get to all the calls."

Prior to this weekend, the program, which was instituted in April 1998, fluctuated between 1,500 and 3,000 subscribers, Graham said.

The company contacted a target group of customers via direct mail and inserts in bills. It didn't push the program in the media through advertising or news releases.

The onslaught comes in the face of predicted spikes in natural gas and heating oil prices through the cold season, and the Northwest Indiana rumor mill appears to have produced the general belief that gas bills were about to go through the roof in October unless customers called before Monday.

To some extent, the rumors are true.

A lack of supply of natural gas has led wholesale costs to rise by roughly 100 percent from last year at this time.

As part of a general industrywide trend toward deregulation, NIPSCO passes the increase along to consumers.

The increase can be found on a gas bill under the description "gas cost adjustment" and can vary wildly from month to month as the natural gas market varies.

Experts have predicted that that part of gas bills will skyrocket this winter, assuming the country experiences a normal cold season.

Under the now wildly popular NIPSCO program, called Price Protection Service, customers can depend on a more predictable monthly bill through one of two options:

* The "fixed price option" freezes the gas cost adjustment portion of the bill for a year. But, contrary to the rumors, the fixed cost may be higher than what the last bill listed.

* The "capped price option" sets a maximum for the gas cost adjustment portion of the bill but does not set a minimum, allowing customers bills to fall with the market but not rise past a point.

http://www.post-trib.com/news/story2/index.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 03, 2000

Answers

WOW I didn't know there were 40,000 readers of this forum in Indiana.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 03, 2000.