Are You Equipped to Shield Your Business from an Ohio Natural Gas Broker?
Is your business getting a seemingly unending number of inquiries from Ohio natural gas brokers? They may seem eager to give you “free” natural gas supply quotes. All they need you to do is sign one deal. If you do, not only have you locked in an inflated natural gas supply price, you have also committed to funding their compensation – all the while believing the supplier is on the hook to pay the broker.
If you want to protect your business from paying way too much for natural gas (up to 25% more), then you or your employees mustn’t get duped into doing bad deals with natural gas brokers.
Are you ready to outmaneuver an Ohio natural gas broker? You can find out by taking this seven-question quiz.
I hope you did well.
If not, I would highly recommend reading about the top six misunderstandings businesses have about Ohio natural gas brokers.
Many Businesses Aren’t Prepared to Outflank Ohio Natural Brokers
Businesses end up doing deals through natural gas brokers because brokers sell them on the idea that brokered deals are better than they could get on their own. Moreover, many natural gas brokers infer that they receive a commission payment from natural gas suppliers to facilitate a deal. Consequently, brokers dupe companies into thinking they won’t be burdened with unauthorized business costs.
Better natural gas deals for free. Who wouldn’t want that for their manufacturing business or hospital? Sounds like a win-win.
But it’s a win-lose. Why? Because most brokers are simply middlemen. A middleman adds an inflator to the natural gas supplier’s actual (and lower) price to make money. For example, if the natural gas supplier’s price is $3.00/million British thermal units (MMBtu), and the broker wants to make $0.25/MMBtu, the broker presents the consumer a price of $3.25/MMBtu.
In short, the higher the broker’s inflator, the higher the business’s natural gas supply price. I’ve seen broker upcharges as high as $1.00/MMBtu. The broker wins, the customer loses.
Worse, there is no check and balance on the escalator. Brokers can set the escalator as high as they want.
Look at it another way. An employee wants help with natural gas procurement. But, they may not know where the “market” is. If a broker presents five prices, and all of them include a hidden escalator, it makes sense that an employee would reason that they have a representative sampling of retail natural gas supply prices. In other words, they would not have a context to deduce that a middleman has marked up the prices.
I Hope You Are Ready to Outmaneuver an Ohio Natural Gas Broker
If you’ve come this far, you’ve reviewed this post and maybe taken the quiz. I hope you and your employees are up to the task of fending off natural gas brokers. Similarly, I hope your business is now more insulated from paying more for natural gas.
If you are curious to discover if a solicitor for your natural gas supply business is a broker, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio’s website has a list. Here, you can inquire by broker name. Also, you can also generate a list by populating the “By Utility” box with “natural gas” and the “By Industry” section with “Broker.” The site provides the names beneath the “Filter Regulated Companies” section.
If You Need Help, Don’t Call a Broker, Call a Natural Gas Procurement Consultant like Foster LLC
Brokers and consultants are not the same. Brokers are middlemen. But, consultants are not. Brokers have inflators built into their natural gas supply prices that consultants don’t.
Many brokers try to pass themselves off as consultants. But at the end of the day, they are brokers. They are middlemen.
Do you know one thing that Foster LLC does as a natural gas consultant? It protects businesses from brokers. To sum up, Foster LLC gets businesses better natural gas supply prices than brokers do.
Can you guess why?
I want to find out why natural gas supply prices garnered through Foster LLC are consitently lower than Ohio natural gas brokers’.
