Hello,

We have a booth at the Ideas for Living Home Show at the Big E fairgrounds this weekend. I will be there for the whole show (Friday-Sunday) and would love to meet you.  We have some really state-of-the art equipment on display… including

1. Viessman Vitola 200 Oil Fired Boiler with stackable indirect water heater. (finest oil fired boiler in the world)
2. The New Mestek Ray Condensing Gas Fired boiler.. (insane piece of equipment)
3. Toyotomi Oil Miser.  I call this the little miracle of water heating
4. Our new Napoleon line of Pellet Stoves

We will also have our SWP fire-logs available for sale at a show special of $6 a bag. (that includes tax)

We are at booth 329.  Stop by and say Hi.  We would love to meet you!

Today’s post has nothing to do with the oil industry…  But just a reminder to go out and vote!  Exercise your constitutional right to vote.  In too many places on this planet, people don’t have the right to choose how their government operates.  WE DO have that right.  However that right is useless is people don’t go out and actually vote!  

The title I named this almost sounds like a commercial for the military… Sorry

Anywhoo…

Sometime in the next few days (gimme till Friday).. that little link you see on the homepage of the website “If you’re a current customer,let us know how we’re doing” is going to take you to a detailed customer survey.. (which I just recently finished typing… I ask you to wait till Friday to see it, cause..well I am html challenged and often need help in that department)  I would love nothing more than if every one of our customers filled it out. Now I know that isn’t going to happen, but I am hoping, eventually, a great many of you will. 

We are really trying here at Fuel Services to become “Customer Oriented”.. (disclaimer here: not that we ever were’nt.. but even more so. :)  )  To do that, we really need to hear from you more!  What would you like to see from us? What kinds of pricing programs would you like to see from us?  What product lines would you like us to carry?  Would you like to see our invoicing methods changed?  Does our service live up to your expectations?  Those types of questions….

When my father and myself came up with our new tagline “Experience the Difference”.. it wasn’t an accident!  We don’t want to be the typical oil supplier!  We don’t want to be like eveyone else!  We are striving to be the leader in our field in Western Mass.  Now this hasn’t been easy and we have had a few growing pains.. We still are! (how is that for an admission)  an example: We created a whole new customer service department to handle your issues.. (which my sister Mary Beth runs) Now, this has been a challenge because we have been trying to train 4 nice ladies all there is about the oil business.. however most of the time the “training” has/is happening in a live situation on the phone… So there have been some miscues along the way… but I am convinced over the long haul, that this is the right thing for all of our customers… having persons dedicated just to them!  

Back to the survery…. In keeping with our ”Experience the Difference” philosophy, I am asking all who read this to fill out the survey…  It shouldn’t take more than 10 or so minutes of your time.. and as a thank you, I am going to hold a monthly drawing for all those that take their time to fill it out.  Every customer that fills out the survey will have their name placed in a baseball hat (in my office).. and at the end of each month I will draw a name from it, and that person will receive a $25 gift certificate for dinner.  I will start the drawing at the end of November. (those who fill out survey during these final days of October will be entered into the November drawing… you won’t be left out)   I will announce the winner on the blog each month.

ok.. it’s 3:30 in the morning and I need to get some sleep… Have a management meeting in the afternoon with all of our managers… Nighty Night

How is that for a title? :) I use that title, because what I really want to name this post would get me in a lot of trouble with my boss!

I said in my very first post, that I was going to keep this blog candid, open and honest!  I also said I would divulge into the inner workings of our business, and our industry as a whole…  Well here I go… and on to a very touchy subject with some now.  Pre-Buy!  Trust me, I am a man with many words on this right now.

Before I start with my “rant” per se.. Let us take a journey back to mid/late spring..  This was the time when we first heard “rumblings” of pre-buy from our customers.  The oil market started going bonkers, people started getting scared.. so on and so forth.  We kept telling our customers now is not the time you want pre-buy…. but the rumblings kept getting louder and louder.   

So now it is early summer… Prices are higher still… The “rumblings” we are hearing are turning into account cancellations because we haven’t offered our pre-buy yet.  (even though we usually don’t come out with one that early.. and we WANTED to wait this year)  Now when my father and myself hear the words “Account Cancellation”.. we get involved asap!  So, we offered what our customers demanded… pre-buy! 

We sent out our reservation letters (which even those got us in trouble this year, that is another story).. got as many gallons as we thought we needed for pre-buy.. and bammm.. we sent out the offer letters to those who said they were interested.

We sold out in 96 hours… I kid you not…. We literally had a line out both office’s doors that Monday morning.  Personally, I was shell shocked.. I actually couldn’t believe it! I was worried we wouldn’t sell the stuff, thinking to myself….that is a lot of money to shell out in one sum… I was wrong…  We had some customers that we had to turn away (initally ) because we didn’t buy enough product.  (this was the letter I mentioned above… I counted all the gallons that we received from reservation letters, and the final tally was x.5 contracts…. So with the 1/2 we rounded down instead of up… contracts are 42,000 gallons by the way)  So to conclude the preamble to my rant, we had a bunch of happy customers that were all glad they had their pre-buy!  They capped their cost and didn’t have to worry about the winter.

So now we move ahead 3 or so months, to the current.  I can’t begin to tell you the amount of phone calls we have had in the past week about pre-buy….  Customers that want their money back, customers that want us to deliver at retail price and hold off pre-buy, customers that don’t want any fuel, customers calling us scoundrels (and worse)…. you name it…   So needless to say, I am a little peaved, hence the reason for this rant.  What are we to do as your oil supplier?  Do we NOT offer the products and services you expect and demand with your hard earned money? 

For those unfamiliar with how pre-pay works.. It is very simple.. we lock in xxx amount of gallons at a certain price with our suppliers.. and that price is dependant on the market conditions for future contracts at that time.  We then add our normal margin (actually a bit less than normal) and that is how we end up with the customers price per gallon for pre-pay.  It is not really complicated from a pricing perspective.  We then collect the money in advance, customers sign the contracts, and everyone is protected! Customers have their winter fuel at a capped cost!  (which is a valuable commodity by the way) Our suppliers get their money.. we get to pay our employees.. and all is well…. and before I move on, one last thing on this subject… You DO NOT want to do business with an oilheat supplier that doesn’t lock in their gallons in some fashion or another as I have mentioned above.  This is how MANY companies got in trouble last year when the prices went thu the roof. Many companies went belly-up, and took A LOT of their customers money with them! (and most customers had little recourse) We will NEVER allow this to happen to our customers! 

Unfortunately (for pre-buy customers at least), so far this year .. the market price has dropped significantly, and as I type this there is about a $1.50 price difference between pre-buy price and our retail cash price.  There is nothing we can do about this! (without significantly affecting our retail price customers, and that is something we are NOT going to do!)  

I guess what I am trying to say is this…. To our pre-pay customers, I can understand your frustration, I really can… But I hope you can understand the situation we are in.  

To all of our pre-pay customers that haven’t called us “The evil empire” and understand the current market situations and who haven’t tried to “slime-us” in any other fashion… I thank you… I truly do! It is customers like you that make all of us here at Fuel Services come to work everyday….

To all of our pre-pay customers that haven’t been as understanding, or if you are another oilheat suppliers’ customer and are in a similar situation… I hope you can at least understand the situation from the business prospective… and while we certainly can understand your frustration.. there isn’t anything feasible we can do about it.  Understand there is no crystal ball with any financial markets and predicting prices is impossible. (look at Wall Street right now) You can take solace in knowing that you have capped your cost and have a (practically) guaranteed oil supply for the winter.  This is valuable!  Finally, please remember we just try and offer the products and services you ask for, the best we can.

Believe it or not, we are already looking into pricing programs for next year, as I am determined to have more options available to our clients next year!!!!  I am not going to spill any beans, but we are looking into several options to be able to offer our customers next season…some of which may include Caps, downside protections, fixed…  Please keep in mind though, programs such as those have a cost associated with them.  I am sure we will still offer the tradional pre-buy as well for those that absolutely have to have it.  We want to be the leaders in the area with our pricing programs and have the ability to give more options with price protection than a standard pre-buy… So stay tuned….  Enough said from me….

I am figuring I am going to get some response to this blog post!

Till Next Time

It is no secret that we sell and install all sorts of heating,cooling and indoor air quality equipment.  I am sure many of you reading this see our vans,trucks,signs or other promotional material that say “Heating & Cooling Installations”.  Or you may have received a direct mail flyer that we did in a Valpak mailing or such, talking about one of the new modern marvels of the heating world we sell.  Heck, I have a page right on this website that talks about this stuff. (soon to be expanded further)  

I think executives and marketers in this business have been getting it all wrong!  (including myself)  We always talk or write about how great this stuff is, and how much we can save customers on fuel costs… and the likes such as that… But instead of telling  customers how great this new stuff is, we as marketers need to show  customers this.  Doesn’t the old saying go… “You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?”

Well I can “walk” all of you through this.  In the fall of 06, I had our guys completely remove my old heating & cooling system and install a brand new one. Before I tell you what I installed.. here is some foreground info… I purchased my new home in February of 06. With my new ranch home came a 20 or so year old Sears Special Furnace/Central a/c system with an electric water heater. Every time the burner went off in the winter, it sounded like a Peterbuilt truck was driving thru my living room!. (not kidding)  That first summer in my new house my July and August electric bills were $235 and $258.  Now i am a single guy and my house is only 1200 square feet so it didn’t take me long to realize it was time for change!  Hence the change was made before that next heating season.

I had my guys replace everything.  The furnace was replaced with a Viessman boiler and we turned a standard forced hot air system into a hydro-air system.  We junked the electric water heater and replaced with a Super-Stor stainless steel indirect water heater.  The old central a/c condensor (if you can call it that) was replaced with a 13 seer Thermopride unit and it was connected to a first co air handler.  We put in 2 indoor air quality products, an American Standard electronic air cleaner and a AprilAir central humidifier.  I also replaced the old oil tank with a Roth double-walled oil tank. 

So the results… (or the “walk”)  Even after electric rates went up 30% or so since 06′ My electric bill I just paid 2 days ago (the inspiration for this post) was $147.   So I did some research thru ALL of my electric bills since my install was done and ALL of them were lower (at least from the availble comps I had with the old system)  Most of them significantly lower.   Now I haven’t changed my habits at all… I still like my house cold… so please trust me when I say the comps are real.

So you might ask about the oil consumption!  Well I can tell you this… My tank was just filled.  I am completely full as I type this!  Since October 8th of 2007, I have put in a grand total of 493 gallons in my 1200 square foot house.  (remember that I use for heat and hot water now too) And as much as i like my house cool in the summer, I like it warmer in the winter!  So don’t think i am stingy when it comes to my oil.. All I will say is “this stuff works” 

Funny thing now is, if I were to do the same type of conversion today, I would have gone a cheaper route(from an installation cost standpoint) and save even more money!  ( If it were the same circumstances, I wold have replaced the old furnace with a Thermopride furnace and installed one of the new Toyotomi on-demand oil fired water heaters (those things rock)… All of the other components would remain the same) 

So anyone reading this, please visit your local heating & a/c guy (please give us a try if you are in our area… shameless promo I know… us marketing guys :)  ) The new equipment out there really is phenomenal.  You will save lots of money in the long haul, and increase the value of your home in the process!  And with today’s financing options available for equipment, you very well might improve your monthly cash flow.