The views expressed in this column are the opinion of the writer and not necessarily those of the ownership or management of this newspaper.

If a grocery store checker accidentally fails to scan a box of Cheerios at a customer check-out, we wouldn’t expect the store manager to contact that customer two years later and demand they fork over $3.50 for the cereal.

If your homebuilder forgot to add the charges for a hardwood floor in your entryway, you would be surprised – and probably furious – if that builder came back two years later and asked that your mortgage payment be increased to pay off his mistake.

If a car dealer knocked on your door and said, “We didn’t realize that the Toyota Camry you bought two years ago contained an upgraded CD player, so you owe me an additional $300,” you would sweep the guy off your front porch.

But Questar, your natural gas provider, is doing exactly that – and apparently getting away with it.

For some two years, an estimated 600 customers were getting under-billed due to a mistake in the transponders relaying usage amounts to Questar’s trucks. It was Questar’s fault; the company was saving money by not hiring meter readers. The total under-billing is estimated at $1 million, although some say the bill could be much higher, possibly $5 million.

Questar’s initial response was to recoup the money from the 600 customers who naturally had heart palpitations when they received a monthly bill for $2,000 to heat their home. Now the company has agreed to ask those customers to pay only about 25 percent of the bill with Questar writing off a maximum of $480,000. That means the rest of us will pick up the remainder, no matter how high the actual total ends up.

I understand that public utilities don’t operate under the same rules as private businesses. If the grocery store underbills regularly and goes out of business, there’s always a competitor selling Cheerios. If a utility company has the same problem, customers can’t expect an entrepreneur to quickly create a company offering natural gas or electricity. It’s in the public interest to have strong utilities that earn a profit.

However, it seems arrogant to ask customers to bail you out of your own screw-up before looking at other measures. How about the CEO and top management taking a hit with their salary? How about decreasing the number of self-promoting ads on television?

Questar is not the only utility with public relations problems. Annoyed that it only got a $39 million rate increase (about $2 per month for each Utah customer), Rocky Mountain Power is still threatening to “vary the level of service” in Utah. The power company isn’t asking its top brass to chip away at their high salaries. Rather, it will likely not pay overtime to its hourly workers who respond to power outages.

Customer convenience and customer service be damned – the utility companies are mad and aren’t going to take it any more.

And they wonder why we’re not crying with them.