Suburban Propane. How did I start doing business with them? Being unfamiliar with propane, I thought that because they are a national company and well known, it would be my best option. Far from it.
Because of a Facebook post about the cost of fuel, I started to be curious. I found that Galway Co-op was charging .89 a gallon for a $35 a year sign up fee, and checking my cost, I was paying $2.89. Are you kidding me? I use over 3,000 gallons a year. So Suburban kindly offered me a great deal, $2.29, and I of course said no thank you. The glitch: Suburban owns my tank. My new company, Nolan, has prices are attached to Galway's, have no annual fee, own one of the largest fuel storage facilities in the region, and no hidden costs; however, they won't fuel up a Suburban tank. I had to excavate and remove the tank, and install a new one. I received a flat fee for the state of the art 500 gallon tank from Nolan, including excavation, installation, and backfill, for a flat $2,000. That's less than half of everyone else, and since I'm saving more than $3,000 a year by switching, it was a no brainer.
The thing about Suburban is they would not sell me the tank. The tank can't be resold, it's going for scrap, and the fuel and manpower to pick it up and do that could have been offset by my purchase, which they would not entertain. Never rent your tank!!
But here's the kicker: Suburban promised me a refund for fuel left over in their tank. Great. Today, they told me they would pick up their tank on February 9, two weeks from now, and even worse - that my refund would be $2.89 per gallon, MINUS $1 per gallon.
My conclusion is that by not selling homeowners a tank they've been using a decade, and that they wont' refund the cost of the fuel, or refund the cost minus the profit, and by being unable to compete with the real cost of propane, .35 above the spot rate, which is currently .59, they can't be part of the game. They argue their overhead is higher. I argue they have more customers. The bottom line is that one should always check their fuel company, phone/cell provider, cable company and the like, on a regular basis, to see if he is getting screwed. Hat tip to Facebook for having this sort of thing out there, which is yet another reason social media is more than just fun and games.
PS I'd like to add that I spent hours and hours shopping, and asked others to make me an offer knowing the deal I had with Nolan. All of Mr. Robert Nolan's peers said he's a stand up guy, fair, does good business, is growing his storage capacity in a smart way, and is an all around great guy with a great company. read more