TLS received the following letter from someone who claims to work at NJNG. Names, addresses and other sensitive information have been removed.
The following information is for the entire Jewish community of Lakewood. I am an employee at New Jersey Natural Gas. For years I’ve listened to antisemitism toward the Lakewood community from my co-workers. It’s part of the culture in our Lakewood branch. The antisemitism has grown from comments and stupid stunts to overcharging Jewish customers for special services. These special services include adding gas meters, relocating gas services, and retiring gas services for house demolitions
E.g. (moderated) ave, Lakewood. The customer asked to add an additional gas meter and account at their home. They were charged over 500 for a service. The reason why? The NJNG employee, (moderated), responsible for the bill hates Jews. “—- those people” were his exact words for charging this customer. Mr. (moderated) is a 40 year employee which gets him a pass from being disciplined for antisemitic or racist rants.
Mr. (moderated) has also overcharged Jewish customers by inflating the hours or manpower needing to perform jobs. For example, a gas service retirement job that would be charged out for 3 hours, he will make it 3.5 or 4 hours. He has also added charges for traffic control and police for jobs on dead end streets. There are many other examples, but the point is that Mr. (moderated) overcharges people of Lakewood simple because they are Jewish.
You can confirm the excessive charge at (moderated) by asking the homeowner. I would also suggest posting something to see if other people in the community feel they were overcharged for services. Many people probably don’t even realize that they were. People who have been overcharged can reach out to the BPU for help.
I have to remain anonymous to protect my job. Good luck.
why post such a dumb letter which is definitely not true, I’m a builder in Lakewood for the past 35 years, never had any issues with the njng, on the contrary, they are the most helpful and accommodating company from all utilities and great nice people to work with.
How can you possibly say that this letter is not true? because you are a builder??? Does that mean the the homeowner doesn’t get charged more?
If you have not seen NJNG charging for things that used to be free, Thank you are not a real Builder. I think we need a real investigation into this. NJNG along with MUA and JCPL give us all homeowners terrible service when it comes to demolition. Ever try to get a shut off letter Mr. builder?
you can lose thousand of dollars and many weeks or months waiting for them to send you the letters. ENOUGH!!!
Let get to the truth here!
Just because you dont have a problem,
doesn’t mean others dont. Maybe you pay off the bad guys. Maybe you also work for the company or have”friends” who do.
Someone saw something & said something – Thank you!
you must be a looser builder, I get cut off letters with in 24 hours, and nothing is for free these days, just because they charge for things does not make them anti semites, make because the your not getting anymore free food boxes, that also makes the government anti semites,
Moshe you’re pathetic Hard Stop
The maturity level and IQ of the people in the above comments are in the negative numbers. This article wasn’t designed to bash a particular company. It was too raise awareness that there may be some bad actors there and a PSA to look into a seemingly inflated expense before paying it.
I am not a Builder. I am a Homeowner. I’m not in the business of making money off of people who under tremendous stress. I think this is wrong. at Best an investigation will prove that everyone is nice and doing their work properly. at Worst, It will expose an undercurrent that exists not only at NJNG but possibly at many other government run or government overseen utilities. what do you have to lose/hide?
If this is true then whistleblower protection will not only protect the job but will open NJNG up to a giant lawsuit if this persona is fired. If this is true I suggest he or she report it to the proper authorities and not anonymously to TLS.
If I were in his position, I’d do the same. Just because eventually I’ll end up being right, doesn’t mean that I’m interested in going through potentially years of stress and aggravation.
He should be thanked for sending out this alert to protect the community and not just being selfish and making believe he didn’t see anything.
Thank you to the letter writer!
This Makes sense: 12 years ago when I was building a house for one of my daughters I had to throw down the old house first. JCP&L & NJ Am Water came right away and disconnected; but NJ Natural Gas gave nothing but problems and excuses, first they said that the road was paved less than 3 years ago when in fact it was paved 4 years ago, than winter arrived and no road opening permits can be issued until spring, NJ Natural Gas deliberately delayed the demolition of the old house for over 6 months of which I already had the house vacated and no rent came in during that time. It was horrible.
This is a BLOCKBUSTER letter!!! TREMENDOUS THANKS TO THE INDIVIDUAL THAT CHOSE TO WRITE IN!!!
To those that are concerned of the repercussions to the community. Its very simple, this should be reported to the agencies listed and a thorough investigation should take place. If its false and there was no over-charging or anti-semitism then so be it and they should have nothing to hide.
If there indeed were issues then those responsible should be held accountable and it will be a lesson for others going forward.
We must take this letter very seriously and demand an investigation.
If THE LAKEWOOD SCOOP is ready to take this on and keep us all posted would be amazing. Thanks so much!
I re-iterate, if they did nothing wrong then there is nothing wrong with an investigation and we will thank NJNG for their service.
The bottom line is that anyone can write an anonymous letter. We can speculate whether it’s true or not, but The Lakewood Scoop posting this makes a mockery of them as a supposed news organization. It’s fine if the letter writer remains anonymous to us readers, but at the very least it’s the Lakewood Scoop’s responsibility to verify that this is an actual employee of NJNG (rather than this disgruntled homeowner who got charged a high rate, for example).