Transcript

Energy prices · Chuck Douglas

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Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I didn't know if tonight
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Speaker 1: would be live or memorys because I got to be
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Speaker 1: up get three thirty tomorrow morning, because I'm filling in
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Speaker 1: for Mike tomorrow morning on Columbus Morning News. And you
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Speaker 1: know that one extra hour getting out of here a
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Speaker 1: little early and going did but I couldn't do it.
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Speaker 1: The day was just too beautiful. The sun was out
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Speaker 1: and the temperatures were nice, and I just I've I've
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Speaker 1: got the energy now. I will pay for it later.
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Speaker 1: I want to stay away from the Queen. I get it. No,
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Speaker 1: not at all. Yeah, I rush home to her. Man,
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Speaker 1: that's what you say? Oh shut up. Yeah. So anyway,
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Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, beginning at six am, I'm in doing Columbus
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Speaker 1: Morning News. So if you wake up early tur on
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Speaker 1: your radio, enjoy me, oh won't you. I had some
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Speaker 1: adventures today. I posted on Facebook earlier about the gas
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Speaker 1: bill that came in, which just floored me, just absolute, man,
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Speaker 1: just just floored me. But I did some googling, did
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Speaker 1: some calling, did some things to make some changes. I
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Speaker 1: want to share those with you, and in fact, I'm
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Speaker 1: to post right now. Hang on a second, let me
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Speaker 1: let me turn this little doohickey on I am going
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Speaker 1: to post right now on my Facebook page a link
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Speaker 1: that you can use boom to compare your rates. You
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Speaker 1: look at your bill, look at your gas bill, your
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Speaker 1: electric bill. It can't help you with water, sorry, the
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Speaker 1: city sells you that. But you look at the rate
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Speaker 1: you're paying on your bill, and then search your zip
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Speaker 1: code and whether you're looking at an electric or gas
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Speaker 1: and it will show you. Because you have consumer choice
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Speaker 1: here in Ohio, it will show you all the various
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Speaker 1: rates that are available to you, some of which you
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Speaker 1: have to pay attention now, some of which are locked,
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Speaker 1: some are variable. What we have right now with Columbia
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Speaker 1: Gas of Ohio is odd because they don't make it
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Speaker 1: depends on where you live, what part of town you
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Speaker 1: live in, what area they say, all that kind of stuff,
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Speaker 1: because they will pick for an area, but it's not
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Speaker 1: necessarily the same for the next area they pick because
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Speaker 1: they have a variable rate supplies. Which when this consumer
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Speaker 1: choice came in and Zach, you weren't even here, you
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Speaker 1: weren't an adult. I don't think when this happened, but
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Speaker 1: when it's got to the point where Columbia Gas used
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Speaker 1: to be your gas company, Ohio Bell was your phone company.
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Speaker 1: That was just that's what they did. But then, like
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Speaker 1: the phone company, they broke them up. The Columbia Gas
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Speaker 1: will take the rate of whatever company that they choose
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Speaker 1: to put in your area. In my case, Spires Energy
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Speaker 1: is what I have. In January, December into January, the
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Speaker 1: rate was like seventy nine cents I think it was
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Speaker 1: for cubic foot on the natural gas. At the end
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Speaker 1: of January, just in time for it to get cold
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Speaker 1: and people need to warm their houses and everything, the
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Speaker 1: rate went from that seventy nine to a dollar seven
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Speaker 1: per cubic foot. Well, I'm just shocked at that. Crazy.
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Speaker 1: Never would have seen that coming, Absolutely crazy. And it'll
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Speaker 1: change again in a month, and it'll change again in
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Speaker 1: a month and all that so just outrageous. It resulted
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Speaker 1: in my gas bill coming in today for five hundred
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Speaker 1: and three dollars. I have not been five hundred dollars
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Speaker 1: worth of warm I'm sorry, just absolutely nuts. So I
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Speaker 1: get on the website and I start checking around to
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Speaker 1: see what's available to me. I locked in a twelve
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Speaker 1: month contract with another provider. Columbia Gas has to basically
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Speaker 1: approve it. It's kind of like poorting your phone number
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Speaker 1: from one cell company to the other, I guess. But
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Speaker 1: I locked in a rate for twelve months of forty
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Speaker 1: nine point nine cents per cubic foot, so less than
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Speaker 1: half of what my current outdo is percubic foot. Now,
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Speaker 1: could something happen? Could gas go down in four months
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Speaker 1: and then I'm stuck paying high? Yes? On the other hand,
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Speaker 1: and more likely, as far as I'm concerned, it can
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Speaker 1: go up and I'm still locked in at my forty nine,
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Speaker 1: which is what I want. It's and the bill would
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Speaker 1: be half of what it is. And then of course
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Speaker 1: you got all you know, all the taxes, the fees,
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Speaker 1: the charges and all that crap on top of it,
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Speaker 1: which was about one hundred dollars of my bill. I
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Speaker 1: think it comes out to like, uh, I want to
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Speaker 1: say three eighty six or something like that for just
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Speaker 1: the natural gas. But once you add in the recovery
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Speaker 1: fees and the the transportation charges and the sales taxes
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Speaker 1: and all that stuff, that's what took it to five
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Speaker 1: O three one hundred and fifty charge. Yeah, yeah, absolutely nuts.
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Speaker 1: And as I've said before, and if this is a conundrum,
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Speaker 1: my buddy Harry I've known him since high school. He's
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Speaker 1: a good guy. We were going a little bit back
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Speaker 1: and forth on Facebook about this. We've had the discussion before.
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Speaker 1: It's a catch twenty two because these companies are publicly
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Speaker 1: traded companies. You can't just take away, you know, somebody's
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Speaker 1: stock ownership in a company. On the other hand, when
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Speaker 1: something is required for life, for you to exist, or
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Speaker 1: mandated by the government, you could exist if you wanted to.
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Speaker 1: You could exist in your house, probably without electricity, without
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Speaker 1: natural gas. It better have a wood birding fireplace, better
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Speaker 1: be a small house, and and you know, got some
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Speaker 1: oil lambs and candles. You could but the government's not
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Speaker 1: going to let you do that. They're going to say, hey, no, no,
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Speaker 1: you're living in the city. You've got to have you
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Speaker 1: got to have utilities. So they're government mandated. If they're
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Speaker 1: going to be government mandated and they are required for
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Speaker 1: your survival as a living being, I don't know that
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Speaker 1: it's right that they are profit centers, that they are
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Speaker 1: publicly traded profit centers. And it's just can you check
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Speaker 1: real quick for me, because I can't. It's hard for
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Speaker 1: me to type and talk at the same time. Closing
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Speaker 1: price for SR stock is SR. That's all it is.
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Speaker 1: That's the that's the Spires Energy that I had. They
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Speaker 1: were at ninety one something this afternoon when I checked
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Speaker 1: them ninety so they went down just a little bit,
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Speaker 1: so ninety bucks a share. They've got stockholders. Spires is
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Speaker 1: going to pull the gas out of the ground or
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Speaker 1: wherever they get it, and they've got to make a
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Speaker 1: dividend for those stockholders while paying for their buildings, for
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Speaker 1: their equipment, for their labor and all that stuff. So
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Speaker 1: they've got to pay all that overhead and a dividend
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Speaker 1: to their stockholders. So they have to sell the price
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Speaker 1: way up here to Columbia Gas. Columbia Gas in turn
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Speaker 1: gets the gas. They've got to pay for all their overhead,
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Speaker 1: their big buildings, their employees, their equipment, their capital funds,
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Speaker 1: and of course dividends for their stockholders. So the price
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Speaker 1: goes up again. How does this help the consumer? I
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Speaker 1: don't understand how this helps the consumer, based versus the
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Speaker 1: old way when Columbia Gas went and got gas and
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Speaker 1: delivered it to your house and your furnace came on.
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Speaker 1: I don't know how it got better, but that is
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Speaker 1: where it is, and I just When I saw that
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Speaker 1: bill today, I just I'm I was flabbergasted because between
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Speaker 1: gas and electric My mother in law, by the way,
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Speaker 1: let me tell you this, this threw me off. She
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Speaker 1: called this morning and she's talking to the Queen and
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Speaker 1: she said, what was Chuck talking about on Facebook about
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Speaker 1: watch your gas bill? And the Queen had her get
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Speaker 1: her bill and switched to her supplier for gas through
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Speaker 1: Columbia Gas. Her supplier is not Spires, it's AEP. But
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Speaker 1: but here's the deal. It's not American Electric Power. It's
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Speaker 1: another company called AEP that does natural gas as opposed
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Speaker 1: to electricity. But that really threw me for Lou. I'm like, what, hey, huh,
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Speaker 1: how'd you get it? How's AEP doing natural gas? I
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Speaker 1: don't understand that at all, and I don't even know
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Speaker 1: what AEP stands for. But that's that's what she's getting.
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Speaker 1: And you know, she said her bill win a. You
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Speaker 1: guys have been commenting on Facebook today my bill double
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Speaker 1: my when between the gas bills going out rages and
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Speaker 1: the electric bills going outrageous and everybody constantly wanting remember
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Speaker 1: last year when the p U c o OF they
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Speaker 1: granted a a rate increase to AEP at the first
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Speaker 1: of the year, and then like it took a heartbeat
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Speaker 1: for AEP said we're coming back for another rate increase
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Speaker 1: in June. That that was amazing. And I tried to
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Speaker 1: get someone from the p u c O, the Public
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Speaker 1: Utilities Commission of Ohio. They're supposed to be the watch
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Speaker 1: dog group, you know, watching out for our well being.
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Speaker 1: That I said, can I get your your media representative,
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Speaker 1: your public information officer? And they told, we don't have
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Speaker 1: anyone in the capacity. How can you be a Public
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Speaker 1: Utilities Commission and not have anybody to speak to the public.
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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, man, It just when you look at this
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Speaker 1: when the price of everything is just going outrageous, whether
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Speaker 1: we're talking about you know, grocery things, what's mate up
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Speaker 1: sixty seven percent? I think it was sixty seven percent
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Speaker 1: for beef in the last three years. I believe that's
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Speaker 1: what I read utilities through the roof, the cost of everything.
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Speaker 1: Is your income going up that much? When the overall
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Speaker 1: cost of living in your house is seventy percent higher
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Speaker 1: than it was two years ago, are you making seventy
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Speaker 1: percent more than you were two years ago? There's no
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Speaker 1: way to keep up with this. And I wonder if
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Speaker 1: we're going to have to wait until utilities combined are
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Speaker 1: higher than mortgage payments before somebody says we need to
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Speaker 1: put the brakes on this. But in the meantime, save
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Speaker 1: yourself whatever money you can. Just Chuck Douglas on Facebook.
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Speaker 1: Go to my page and my profile pictures, my little lupa.
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Speaker 1: Go to my page and the last thing I posted
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Speaker 1: on there was this link to what we used to
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Speaker 1: call the Apples to apples comparison, where you can put
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Speaker 1: in your zip code and whether you're looking for gas
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Speaker 1: or electric and see what you're paying versus what you
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Speaker 1: could be paying, and do yourself that favor, because this
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Speaker 1: is this is just just getting nuts. A two one
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Speaker 1: nine eighty six my number eight two one WTV. And
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Speaker 1: let's start with Jim. You're on the Legacy Retirement Group
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Speaker 1: dot com phone lines. Jim, how are you?
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Speaker 2: I am doing very well, so Comra. Do you not
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Speaker 2: believe in capitalism?
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Speaker 1: I believe in capitalism. I also believe in things making sense.
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Speaker 1: As I said, it's a conundrum because everybody's got to
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Speaker 1: make money. I'm good with that. However, when it's something
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Speaker 1: that's life sustaining, I have problems with it being something
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Speaker 1: that they are going to make this kind of profit
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Speaker 1: on and record profit quarter after quarter for public utilities
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Speaker 1: is a little bit crazy.
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Speaker 2: So would you prefer it be controlled by the government.
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Speaker 1: Well, the water is controlled by the government, and it's
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Speaker 1: out of damn control too, Jim.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't disagree with you on that. Prices are
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Speaker 2: out of control.
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Speaker 1: And we're building how many data centers there are going
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Speaker 1: to be? How much of that water is going to
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Speaker 1: be used for those data centers? When my rates are
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Speaker 1: going up, When I'm driving down the streets and I
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Speaker 1: see a big hole in the ground with water spewing
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Speaker 1: out of it for a month because the city can't
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Speaker 1: get to it, and my bill's going to go up.
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Speaker 1: When a storm comes through and blows down power posts
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Speaker 1: and AAP wants to replace the power post because they
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Speaker 1: couldn't put them underground, and my bill's going to go up.
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Speaker 1: At some point, something's got to be in our favor.
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Speaker 2: I can't argue with it. But you had too much coffee,
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Speaker 2: my friend.
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Speaker 1: No, I just got a five hundred dollars gas bill.
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Speaker 1: That's inspiring enough. I didn't even need the coffee.
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Speaker 2: I'd be you know, what in the bed myself as
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Speaker 2: far as that goes. But I just I understand, you
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Speaker 2: know it sucks, but I mean, everything has gotten so
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Speaker 2: ridiculously expensive. I really enjoyed the part of you guys
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Speaker 2: talking about how to look at the bottom of your
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Speaker 2: guess able to find out. I didn't know you could
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Speaker 2: do that.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, look at it's actually on the back of
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Speaker 1: page one. Back of page one, it'll say your the
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Speaker 1: cost that you paid, and it'll show you your cubic
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Speaker 1: foot cost and your your what do you call it?
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Speaker 1: Not generation but basically the transferring fee to get the
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Speaker 1: gas from where it is, to deliver it to you
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Speaker 1: and all. But it breaks it all down on the
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Speaker 1: back of page one.
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Speaker 2: I will check that out and thank you for saving
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Speaker 2: me some money.
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Speaker 1: You are very welcome, Jim. I appreciate you, buddy, Thank you.
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Speaker 1: I never drove on a public road before. Jim's gonna
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Speaker 1: get you, man, he knows, he knows where to find you.
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Speaker 1: I got who is that Ben? Ben's on the way
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Speaker 1: room for you too at A two one ninety eight
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Speaker 1: six A two one w TV. And I just I'm
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Speaker 1: not I'm not crazy. I'm just I'm just a little fibbergasted. Man,
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Speaker 1: it's it's profit is good, but profit in the in
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Speaker 1: the way of just hurting everybody universally, that that's that's
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Speaker 1: not a good thing.