New Wave of Ads for Gas Company

Have you seen or heard the barrage of commercials that Southern California Gas Co. has unleashed on the airwaves?

I just heard one of the radio commercials, and if I didn’t know better, I would have concluded that they are a wonderful, public-spirited company, interested only in giving their customers more and better service.

Oh, if only a consumer could write their next commercial, it might sound something like this:

Announcer: We’re the Gas Company and we’d like to tell you the facts.

Fact: We’ve instituted a new, four-hour guaranteed service window. Although we opposed this legislation as unnecessary government regulation, we now support it fully since it has become law.

Fact: We will soon begin to charge you for many services that we used to perform for free. You see, some other businesses owned by our parent company, Pacific Enterprises--Thrifty Drugs and Big 5 Sporting Goods--are losing millions of dollars, and we thought you could help us recover some of the money.

Fact: We’re spending so much time trying to think up new ways to charge you more money that we might take just a little longer to respond to your bothersome reports of hissing gas.

But don’t worry, we’re the Gas Company. Glad to be of service . . . to our debt.

It sounds like a winner to me.

JON C. MERRITT

Los Angeles