Fuel oil providers

[blalor.livejournal.com]

Not sure how many folks here are responsible for buying fuel oil, but I thought I'd throw this out there, anyway.

I live in Medford and get fuel oil from Erickson.  Near as I can tell, they've been delivering to this house for at least 50 years.   We got a delivery yesterday and I realized we're paying $3.59/gallon … and they put 150 gallons in the tank.  *eek*  I've done a bit of comparison shopping via newenglandoil.com and it shows that what I'm paying is at the top of the range.   I actually signed up for Clickfil this past spring, but they went belly-up before making a single delivery.   I'm all for supporting the community and all, but there's helping put someone's kid through college and then there's sending 'em in a Ferrari.

The newenglandoil.com site is the only reference I've found for oil prices, and I don't want to sign up with the lowest bidder and have them turn out to be shady.  Does anyone here have any experience with other local distributors?  What are you paying per gallon?

Heating oil prices in Mass. on the rise - The Boston Globe

Web-Based Mass. Heating Oil Supplier Clickfil Disappears Without a Trace

I'm going to look seriously into upgrading to natural gas next year…

Comments

[ron_newman]

I retagged this to utilities which has some previous discussions of fuel oil providers.

[blalor.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Ron. I search for "fuel oil" but didn't find anything earlier. I do a little more digging.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

When I was buying home heating oil, I used that web site and called the cheapest place*. They seemed legit, so I went with them. No problems at all. I have no idea why anyone would use one of the expensive places.

(* I think it was the Oil Connection.)

[frotz.livejournal.com]

The cheapest places are often the smallest places, and if you need immediate service you may be out of luck. The guy I used to use had a truck, a service van, and a dog, and near as I can tell that was his whole business, delivering oil and doing emergency maintenance during the winter and doing routine preventive maintenance during the summer. Sometimes it would take a couple of days from calling to getting oil and/or he'd miss deliveries, though. (I, being cheap and fairly low-maintenance, was OK with this, and only stopped dealing with him when he merged with some giant "full-serivce" outfit that wanted a credit agreement and a contract and all sorts of similar crap.)

Cheap often also means you call for oil and pay on delivery when you need it, which some people absolutely hate and who will instead sign up for a more expensive full-service place who will have somebody come by every month or whatever and top off the tank so they don't have to think about it. Not my thing, but for somebody who just doesn't want to think about or deal with it a delivery (and maybe service) contract is a heck of a lot better than running out.

We just moved

[ellenita.livejournal.com]

And the previous owners used Fawcett Oil (http://www.fawcettenergy.com/fawcett_oil.html), so we continued using them. So far, so good. We got a discount for our first tank fill with them and their maintenance thus far has been speedy and comprehensive.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

I had a look at your first link there---note that you'll get a lot more choices in your neighborhood if you choose "North Boston" rather than "North of Boston".

[ron_newman]

Wow, that's truly weird. I don't think the website understands what "South Boston" really means, either.

[blalor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty bizarre. Just putting in my zip brings up a lot more hits.

[smammy]

Try Mass Energy Consumers Alliance. They negotiate lower rates with a number of local suppliers. Membership dues are $20 per year, and they advertise savings of $150-$350 per year compared to the market price.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest this as well.

We use them and have been happy. They set us up with Faulkner Brothers, who have been great (we had them replace our furnace this year using that fancy pants rebate!).

[ratushebarl.livejournal.com]

Dittoes for Mass Energy Consumers Alliance.

[masswich.livejournal.com]

Ditto to MECA as well. I don't think they have the lowest price but it seems to be on the lower end, and I assume that the companies they use won't screw members of MECA because they want to continue to have MECA send members to them. I think we paid about $3.35 for our last fillup a couple of weeks ago.

I remember looking at Erickson's price a while back and found it very high.

[blalor.livejournal.com]

Very cool, I'll definitely give them a try.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Erickson is sometimes on the high end of the range, but as a maintenance contractor customer, I love 'em. Just recently they came out on a Friday night and clomped through the not-entirely-cleared snow up my driveway to fix my oil burner. And since I've got a maintenance contract, I just had to pay for parts. (I figure one service call covers a whole lot of difference in oil prices)

[blalor.livejournal.com]

We declined to participate in the service contract again this year. I didn't think the price was worth it, and you can only get it if you get oil from them, I think. I don't know what the cost of the service call is (I failed to service my burner last fall…) but if I can save 40-50 bucks per fill-up by getting fuel oil at a more reasonable price, I'm pretty sure I'll recoup multiples of the cost of a service call (provided nothing goes wrong)l

[atriplex007.livejournal.com]

Do you know how old your boiler is? Is it steel or cast iron? I had a 22-yr old steel boiler and the $120/yr service plan I purchased was well worth the investment. I easily recouped the cost of the plan in my four years with the boiler, having to replace its motor, then later a motor coupling, control switch, etc.

[leko.livejournal.com]

I used fawcett for the last two years, but this fall when my boiler filled the basement with smoke, and fawcett noticed my tank was leaking, I finally decided to switch to natural gas.

It cost me a bunch to switch, even with the subsidized boiler from national grid, but I had an unusually expensive installation job.

Despite that, it has been worth it for me. With natural gas everything just works. With oil I'd sometimes run out (fawcett didn't always estimate my usage correctly) and it seemed like I was always dealing with things like clogged filters, etc. Now I can get as much heat as I want, and it actually seems to be about 15% cheaper.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

My last oil delivery was about the same as the price you just paid. What you need to worry about is emergency service/maintenance. If your furnace breaks down, especially at night or on a weekend, most places will not service it if you are not a customer. And some places may not do service calls at all. So while the cheapest price looks good, just be careful that you can get service or an emergency delivery if you need it.

p.s.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

We used Faulkner for many years, until they started to sub-contract their repair work and then were not happy with the result. We have used Cubby and Melrose Oil (Faulkner is a subsidiary) and have been pleased.