[prepend]

My gas company is regulated, their customer service sucks.

I am a bit down because I’m not aware of any success in fixing this kind of problem through regulation.

I’m trying to think of a regulated industry or company that has service as good as even Walmart and can’t come up with anything.

The hope would be that at least they have some bank level of regulation where they at least have to respond by snail mail and stuff.

[ttul]

I should have added: regulate them to increase competition. When the long distance telephone market was deregulated in the 1990s, ending the monopoly of the Bell Operating Companies, prices crashed rapidly and service quality improved - albeit for a time.

Similarly, when you “don’t have a choice” except to work with, say, Google, there is no incentive for them to provide good service. Find a way to introduce competition and everything magically transforms.