contract with Rite Rate in 2006. However, I do not fault

Rite Rate for my misreading of where nat gas pricing was going. At the time it looked to me that nat gas was going thru the roof. It did go higher 1 year (so I saved a couple hundred bucks that year – 07), but over the life of the contract I paid an extra $1000 for "price stability".

I am surprised to see Rite Rate unfairly lumped together with door to door sales companies. I called them (no solicitation) and their contract is not "evergreen" so when it expired it reverted back to Union Gas rates.

I think that if gas prices were at say 50 or 60 cents, we wouldn't be hearing any complaints. How weird is that!

Again I feel it's not "rite" to blame the reseller for ripping off customers any more than one would blame the banks for charging 6% on a 5 yr mortgage when a few years into that contract the prevailing rates are at 3 or 4%.

Can't we just live with the decisions we make, good or bad.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Sumner signed up on March 15, 2006 near the peak of the market after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. She signed up for a 5-year fixed rate of 38.4 cents/m3. At the time of her sign up she received the lowest 5-year rate available to her. In fact, our two main competitors Direct Energy and Just Energy were selling 5-year contracts for 42.7 c/m3 and 45 c/m3 respectively at that time. In addition, the Union Gas variable rate was 41.7 c/m3, higher than the rate she received from us.

The quoted savings that Mrs. Sumner takes exception to are to "current rates being sold at the door and on the phone". They are comparing our fixed rate to those of our competitors, not to the variable rate of Union Gas. When she signed up, Mrs. Sumner saved 4.3 c/m3 compared to Direct Energy and 6.6 c/m3 compared to Just Energy. So, our message is that door to door costs more and customers will get a lower fixed rate by choosing RiteRate over our competitors.

Finally, we do post the Union Gas variable rate going back to 2003 in the Utility Rate History section of our website. We do this because we believe in full disclosure before a customer signs a contract. Unfortunately, in retrospect Mrs. Sumner's timing was not great but at the time of her decision our offer was a very good deal. Whether you save compared to the variable rate of the Utility is solely dependent on timing, and the time to sign a contract is when the market is way down not way up like it was in 2006.

We don't automatically renew customers and we certainly respect Mrs. Sumners decision to return to the variable rate of Union Gas, which she did on July 1, 2011.

Brian Wikant

COO & VP Marketing

Canadian RiteRate Energy

Don’t just listen to their sale pitches or advertisements, it can be misleading.