On December 7 of last year, we asked Pyrofax to fill our tank, as we
were going out of state. As usual, Pyrofax stopped fueling when the
whistle sounded and reported filling the tank. On January 23, because of
the extremely cold weather, we asked a neighbor to check the house.
Although the house thermostats were set at 60 degrees, he found the
furnace off and the inside temperature of the house in the low 30
degrees. The restart button put the furnace on but only for two
minutes.
January 23 was a Sunday, and we called Pyrofax to send a service
technician to the house. We reported that it was only 47 days since our
tank had 550 gallons in it. (Our furnace is five years old and the
installer has said burning 24/7 at 65 degrees, the furnace would never
burn more than 200 gallons in a month.) So the problem was probably not a
fuel shortage. We were informed that Pyrofax now subcontracts service
calls, but they would arrange to send someone.
The someone was from Preferred Oil and Propane out of Barre; he came to
the house and could not get oil from the tank. He called the Pyrofax
driver on standby for the weekend who told him we were not out of oil.
The service technician then went ahead and replaced the oil pump at a
parts and overtime labor charge of $332.75. He then reported that he
still couldn't pump any oil and we must be out of oil and we needed a
delivery.
We were then told Pyrofax's driver would not "roll the truck" without
payment for our December delivery plus a $125 overtime payment for the
driver. We paid over $900, and Pyrofax came and delivered over 500
gallons of oil at $3.60 a gallon. This turned out to be a very expensive
Sunday because of a faulty whistle in the tank.
When later I complained to Pyrofax about the payment to the driver, they
said he didn't work for free and had to be paid a salary. We agree, but
his salary even as a weekend standby driver sitting in the company's
office or garage is part of Pyrofax's doing business and should not be
totally borne on the backs of customers already stressed. Four
deliveries on a Sunday would probably leave Pyrofax with a profit versus
an expense. A more modest "emergency" charge of $50 would be
understandable. Secondly, Pyrofax took no responsibility for the faulty
whistle, as any equipment on my premises is now my responsibility, even
if they did install the equipment. Finally, they never mentioned that
the service call from their subcontractor would run over $200, even
without any new parts or labor. As it was, Pyrofax induced the service
technician to install an unneeded oil pump. (No credit was given for the
removed and still usable part.) All of this resulted in a service call
bill of over $500.
The oil crisis seems to have fueled two other crises: one of morality
and one of greed, as scarcity destroys one and pumps up the other.
Stellan P. Wollmar lives in Fayston.
