Amerigas Propane

Not that great a service. Amerigas knows you are dependent on them and they treat you like you owe them. Vast differences in the way individual offices treat you, but overall, not really very good at customer service. They don't really care if you are satisfied.

Strengths: Amerigas is a large, nationwide supplier of liquid propane. We have a contract for propane supply for our field offices which use propane for heating, hot water generation and back up generators. Our contract with them is a keep full contract with a price set by the "Warren posting" which is a wholesale price index. We have a set price point above the Warren posting and this is what we pay for propane. The company has a weather algorithm which calculates propane use based upon posted weather reports. It is pretty good at predicting propane use. The correlation between propane use and the algorithm triggers the automatic delivery. Unfortunately, this doesn't work that well. See next slide.

Needs to improve: The Warren posting fluctuates yearly, with low prices in the summer and higher prices in the winter. While it would make sense, to fill you tank in the summer, so you can carry the price savings into the colder climates, Amerigas usually will not do this. They wait until the winter rise in prices kicks in before they fill your tank. Therefore, you pay a higher total cost. Once winter comes around and your heating needs increase, the tank fill calculator often is 15-20% off and this leads to our office running out of propane if we don't stay on top of capacity in the tank. If the tank runs out, you have to request an emergency refill which cost's additional money, so in the end you are not really saving anything based upon the contract. Additionally, their customer service is quite poor, you can never get ahold of a rep in an emergency and often when you do, they do not relay your request to the driver to deliver, so it has been days when we had empty tanks.