I'm in the Houston area and haven't had these issues. - You get small new companies popping up all the time and dying through mergers and acquisitions: to some

I'm in the Houston area and haven't had these issues. - You get small new companies popping up all the time and dying through mergers and acquisitions: to some extent this can be mitigated through your choice of provider. I haven't gone through one merger/acquisition, and I've used 3-5 different providers in ~10 years. - If there's a problem theres's nobody to call and nobody whose responsibility is fixing it: I don't remember how it was at my apartments, but since I've moved into my house, I call Centerpoint to fix all power problems, regardless of whose service I'm actually using.