New Wave of Ads for Gas Company
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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
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