When the worst of 2012's storms largely spared Western Pennsylvania and its energy customers, it spared the energy companies, too.
Two of the country's largest power and gas utilities working in Pennsylvania received average to good marks from customers in a nationwide consumer survey being released Tuesday by American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Pennsylvania utilities owned by NiSource Inc. and FirstEnergy Corp. mostly managed to avoid the high-stakes tests from high-powered storms that caused so many outages in 2012. And that helped them avoid the outrage many customers across the Northeast had for their utility providers, especially electric companies, said David VanAmburg, managing director of the Michigan-based index.
“Weather is a major, major part of the experience,” VanAmburg said. “There is a pattern of utilities that don't have bad weather events get better ratings.”
The results back up other recent research showing that NiSource's Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania Inc. and FirstEnergy Corp.'s Penn Power and West Penn Power have some of the most satisfied customers in the region. J.D. Power and Associates, another consumer ratings agency, ranked all three in the top half among similar-size utilities in the eastern region for 2012, said John Hazen, a senior director at the company. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission's most recent annual evaluation, for 2011, showed the three companies also had some of the lowest legitimate complaint rates among power and gas utilities.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index, which does surveys across several industries, questioned more than 8,000 randomly selected households, VanAmburg said. Each survey lasted about 10 to 12 minutes, essentially asking customers to judge the quality and value of their experience, he said.
The results it released to the public Tuesday spotlighted only the 29 biggest holding companies and 43 biggest operating companies. It didn't individually list findings for other local companies such as Duquesne Light, Equitable Gas Co. and Peoples Natural Gas Co.
Both NiSource and FirstEnergy showed consumer ratings basically unchanged from last year. FirstEnergy dropped one point from last year, putting it two points shy of the national average, 77 out of 100, for investor-owned utilities.
The drop may result from power companies it owns farther east, company spokesman Mark Durbin said. Hurricane Sandy affected many customers it has in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he said.
“As part of our regular operations, we focus on enhancing the day-to-day level of service we provide,” he said in an emailed statement.
NiSource finished in the top third of that same class, with a score of 81 out of 100. It has benefitted from its large gas business, as all gas utilities have had a strong improvement since 2008 when gas prices began a steady decline, VanAmburg said.
A Columbia spokesman did not return a request for comment.
Timothy Puko is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7991 or tpuko@tribweb.com.
