Sky-high bills and fuel surcharges are among the gripes that may have contributed to the Long Island Power Authority?s (LIPA) dismal second to last ranking in a newly released customer service survey.

The latest J.D.Power and Associates survey looked at customer satisfaction in 76 of the nation?s largest utility companies. LIPA ranked second to last in the national survey and dead last among 15 Northeastern utilities.

LIPA officials didn?t take the survey results to heart. Richard Kessel, LIPA Power Authority chairman, pointed to LIPA?s response to recent outages across the Island caused by downed power lines and trees that knocked out electricity to 90,000 customers. Kessel says LIPA has fully restored power to all of its customers, while ConEd has yet to do so. He added that LIPA is dispatching its workers to help ConEd restore power.

As for customer gripes about rising electric costs, LIPA isn?t happy about those either and blames skyrocketing oil and natural gas prices on higher electric bills.