Fuller Oil and Propane

[brk-lnt]

Originally Posted by upthesaukee

From my perspective, automatic delivery does not mean the oil company (any oil company) is going to be able to always calculate oil supplies. I feel that as a homeowner, I have a stake in monitoring the amount of oil I have on hand.

In essence I agree with you. If your usage is much higher than "normal", then you might have to call and schedule a delivery early. But if you are not using excessive amounts of heat, the oil company can and should be able to anticipate your usage AND schedule their drivers on logical routes to make efficient deliveries.

I could see a rare instance where you might have to call them and request an early delivery, even with normal usage. If their business is running properly, it would be reasonable to expect you can get through on the phones with no issues, and they could give you a confirmed delivery in the next 24-48 hours. My experience this year with Fuller has not shown that to be true. In January we were well below 1/4 of a tank and I couldn't get through to anyone at Fuller for a full day, so I had to use an alternate supplier. I finally got through to Fuller, and they topped off the tanks a few days later. Based on historical data (over the last 13 years, I've logged every delivery date and amount) we would have been due for another refill mid-February. That didn't happen, and we were a couple days into March with our tanks running empty. Again, it took several attempts to get through the phones, and on the first call they couldn't give us any confirmation of a timely delivery, just a promise to "put us on the list".

IMO, if they are going to sign you up for *automatic* delivery on a pre-buy program, they should be able to manage that appropriately. Yes, as the homeowner I need to keep an eye on my oil levels, which I did. But Fullers performance this season has been pretty much consistently poor since December-ish.