Quote:
Originally Posted by The Phantom Gourmand
Why would they deliver just 10 gallons, unless they were on some sort of allocation from Sprague because of payment/cash flow issues? And what do phone issues have to do with folks on automatic delivery?
There is a lot more to this story. I feel concern for all the folks who prepaid and must now beg for oil to keep their families warm.
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When you run out of fuel they send a "tech" down with 10 gallons and restart your furnace. The 10 gallons is enough for a day or two, during which time they are supposed to get a full delivery to you. So delivering just 10 gallons, in itself, doesn't mean too much about availability of fuel.
However, I agree about the phones having nothing to do with the auto delivery customers. Fuel. oil or propane, companies have computer programs that calculate fuel usage and the temperature is taken into account. They should be able to calculate and adjust delivery for MOST people. If a few people ran out, I would say that it was just an oops due to the extreme cold. But the scope of problem they are having is incomprehensible. Common sense should have told them they were not delivering oil in a timely manner.
When we ran out in January it had been 8 weeks since a delivery. Normal winter deliveries are no more than 6 weeks apart and in this cold should have been even sooner, not longer. So WHAT'S UP WITH THAT??? That is the question that Fuller has yet to answer and if he doesn't and continues to have these very public and troublesome problems, he is going to lose a lot of customers come next heating cycle.
My totally speculative guess is that Fuller planned on buying oil later in a season at a certain price and the price has skyrocketed past that point and every gallon he has to buy is losing him money on prebuy and capped customers. So he delays his buys as long as he can, hoping for prices to drop, but the cold lingers on and prices are staying high. I'm guessing but if supply is OK, per Sprague, and Fuller is not in financial trouble, WHAT else could it be? A grossly under planned delivery fleet?