I don’t care for monopolies. For all the complaints give about AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, and other telecom providers, competition keeps them on their toes. They can’t get away with being terrible for too long until someone gives in.

Not so when it comes to natural gas in Dallas.

Atmos Energy is a monopoly here. Because of that, it can act like an absolute belligerent bully and demand whatever it wants from you the customer.

There are numerous stories about this. There was even a news story about this earlier on in 2025, but of course things dwindled away. Reddit is filled with threads of people complaining about this.

If you have the misfortune of picking a place which requires natural gas, you are out of luck. Because it appears that for much of Texas, they’re the only player in town.

Let’s try to understand all the ways Atmos Energy works to screw you over. It all just begins with their bill. There are plenty of threads online complaining about this.

The above bill lists 2 massive charges. First, there’s a “customer charge”. What does the customer charge mean? There is no answer at all!

So I went through the documentation. Here is what they say: “This is a set amount each month that covers a portion of the gas company’s fixed costs that it incurs to serve each customer.” You get charged this whether you use their service or not. Don’t use anything? Tough luck!

It’s incredible that they call this is a fixed cost. Are they digging up pipes around my home every single month? Clearly not. This is a way for them to recover the cost of the pipes they’ve dug. But is there any customer anywhere in their network at all for which this fee has stopped? No, of course not!

A fixed cost gets recovered over time. But when the gravy train is moving so smoothly, why not just keep charging their customers indefinitely for this!

The next biggest charge? The Meter Read Fee! No explanation of this is found in the documentation. They somehow mean to make me believe that a real live human drives around the thousands of homes and writes down the number to read the meter. And it costs the company $19 to get this number.

How remarkable! I cannot imagine this whole process taking more than 30 seconds to a minute for a real live human before moving on to my neighbor. But let’s be generous and give them a full 5 minutes to do this.

This means that this worker’s hourly rate works out to $228/hr! Sign me up for this job!

No, of course the real power play here is the executive suite.

Let’s look at the executive compensation here:

• Kevin Ackers, the CEO took home $13.7 million in compensation. A 20% increase from last year. Hurrah Meter Read Fee!
• This compensation is 152x higher than the median employee in the company.
• Christopher Forsythe, the CFO, took home $2.5 million in 2024.
• Karen Hartsfield, the General Counsel, took home $2 million.

and so on.

I guess all those “Customer Charges” aren’t really being used to service the “fixed costs to serve each customer.”

Or maybe the fixed cost means the executive’s ever growing compensation!

But you as the renter have power over this! (And so do you as a homeowner)

Never look at just the dollar amount that a property tells you. That is never just the only rent. If you have a gas stove, consider adding in the fixed costs you’ll incur. In this case, the renter’s rent is now technically an extra $40 each month or an extra $480/year!

(Yes, the meter read fee goes away after the first month apparently)

What’s in your wallet?!

With 3 million customers, this means a hefty $1,440,000,000! That’s 1.4 BILLION.

The best way to counteract this nonsense is to cut out the usage of natural gas altogether. Don’t go to properties where they insist on using natural gas. If you have the ability to, get a portable stovetop and put it on top of your natural gas stovetop.

And disconnect.

We need to push back against endless corporate greed and make choices that cuts these people off.

That’s why these hidden sources of rent are also part of the calculation we’ll do when we work with our clients to help them find a dream home.

Being a renter doesn’t mean you can’t make good conscious decisions. That’s part of our manifesto.

If you’re ready to get started to help you find a great home to live in, click below and setup a no-obligation call.