Winnipesaukee Forum - View Single Post - Amerigas

WillyK · 01-20-2021, 03:24 PM

I shudder to admit the amount of time I've spent battling with Amerigas to keep our home heated over the last 2 months. Here's our story...so far.

We are brand new lakers in Moultonborough. We cut over our service before closing on the home, end of November. After finding that our account didn't have any information in the Amerigas online portal, and watching the tank drop to 30%, I called to schedule a delivery. That's when I discovered the 80-100 minute wait times. I'll skip a lot of the details of that week of phone calls, but I spent a total of about 15 hours on hold, cut off multiple times, you know the drill. (BTW, super nice phone reps, every one of them. Totally useless, but nice people doing their best with basically no authority to help customers.)

Skip ahead to Dec 21, we still have not received any delivery, are officially out of propane. I was promised the 21st, nothing. Then the 22nd, nothing. Finally, the 23rd, and nothing. I've escalated on every official channel I can think of. My family is literally in tears, we had vacated the home to save gas, but are now looking at the prospect of spending Christmas morning in a cold house running water through the pipes to keep them from freezing. Needless to say, not the way we envisioned our first Xmas in a new home.

At my rope's end, I started doing backchannel messaging through my professional network, and reached out personally to multiple national VPs and the COO at Amerigas. Seriously, this is last resort territory for me bothering senior executives on Christmas eve, but I just couldn't bear this futile treadmill any longer.

Well, it worked! I spoke to the VP of Operations by phone, and within 1 hour our security cam revealed an Amerigas truck pulling up and making the delivery.

I have zero reason to believe that I ever would have received a delivery if I hadn't escalated on back channels. Which is so totally unacceptable and frankly just sad.

Postscript: It's now one month later. And you guessed it, we are down to 10% propane, and no delivery scheduled. This week I'm at 1 hour on hold across multiple phone calls (their wait time is down, thank God for small miracles at least!), and no one can seem to get me a delivery. If I haven't heard anything else by tomorrow, I'm probably going to have to start chasing national executives again.

This whole story is a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional operation at Amerigas. It's a sick company right now, and unclear if they can get their act together. I'm still trying to figure out what it will cost for me to get them to remove their tank and switch providers. But I empathize with everyone here who is hostage to Amerigas right now. It's a horrible helpless feeling.

Good luck, and if anyone is friends with a delivery driver on the ground in the lakes region, drop me a note. The folks in the local office are awesome people and working hard for us. Sounds like everything was good last year when dispatch was done locally. It's the new consolidated national machinery that's irreparably broken.

01-20-2021, 03:24 PM	#34
WillyK Member Join Date: Nov 2020 Posts: 21 Thanks: 0 Thanked 5 Times in 3 Posts	Our ongoing Amerigas nightmare I shudder to admit the amount of time I've spent battling with Amerigas to keep our home heated over the last 2 months. Here's our story...so far. We are brand new lakers in Moultonborough. We cut over our service before closing on the home, end of November. After finding that our account didn't have any information in the Amerigas online portal, and watching the tank drop to 30%, I called to schedule a delivery. That's when I discovered the 80-100 minute wait times. I'll skip a lot of the details of that week of phone calls, but I spent a total of about 15 hours on hold, cut off multiple times, you know the drill. (BTW, super nice phone reps, every one of them. Totally useless, but nice people doing their best with basically no authority to help customers.) Skip ahead to Dec 21, we still have not received any delivery, are officially out of propane. I was promised the 21st, nothing. Then the 22nd, nothing. Finally, the 23rd, and nothing. I've escalated on every official channel I can think of. My family is literally in tears, we had vacated the home to save gas, but are now looking at the prospect of spending Christmas morning in a cold house running water through the pipes to keep them from freezing. Needless to say, not the way we envisioned our first Xmas in a new home. At my rope's end, I started doing backchannel messaging through my professional network, and reached out personally to multiple national VPs and the COO at Amerigas. Seriously, this is last resort territory for me bothering senior executives on Christmas eve, but I just couldn't bear this futile treadmill any longer. Well, it worked! I spoke to the VP of Operations by phone, and within 1 hour our security cam revealed an Amerigas truck pulling up and making the delivery. I have zero reason to believe that I ever would have received a delivery if I hadn't escalated on back channels. Which is so totally unacceptable and frankly just sad. Postscript: It's now one month later. And you guessed it, we are down to 10% propane, and no delivery scheduled. This week I'm at 1 hour on hold across multiple phone calls (their wait time is down, thank God for small miracles at least!), and no one can seem to get me a delivery. If I haven't heard anything else by tomorrow, I'm probably going to have to start chasing national executives again. This whole story is a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional operation at Amerigas. It's a sick company right now, and unclear if they can get their act together. I'm still trying to figure out what it will cost for me to get them to remove their tank and switch providers. But I empathize with everyone here who is hostage to Amerigas right now. It's a horrible helpless feeling. Good luck, and if anyone is friends with a delivery driver on the ground in the lakes region, drop me a note. The folks in the local office are awesome people and working hard for us. Sounds like everything was good last year when dispatch was done locally. It's the new consolidated national machinery that's irreparably broken.