$16.07 / ton
delivery was $109.12
and then I see they added a $47 fuel surcharge. they never mentioned that on the phone
It's just a bs way to make more $$$. I'm abt 15 miles from the plant (Meriden). 30 miles roundtrip, one empty. If the damn truck gets an average of 5mpg then they burn 6 gallons of diesel. At $5.00 / gal that's $30.00, total. Assuming they were paying $3.00 / gal before it got crazy they are charging an additional $35.00 over their actual increase.
When I wanted some equipment delivered from San Antonio I walked into the hauling service office and asked the charges and they quoted me $640. When the equipment was delivered a few days later the driver off-loaded it and then filled-out the delivery invoice for $640 plus $77 “fuel surcharge”…. which I promptly told him he could remove that charge because it wasn’t what I was quoted and I wasn’t going to pay it.
He scratched it off…and I wrote a ck for the $640 as quoted.
When my propane delivery invoices arrive my wife pays the bill and files away the invoices. One day I noticed that I was being charged “fuel surcharge” and “hazardous mat’l fee”. They amounted to $24 and $11 each…totally $35. I checked the files and see they had been doing that for the past Year! (I have been doing business with this company for 30 years and about three years ago it came under new ownership.)
I called the office, told them I was a 30+ year customer of monthly-service calls and had never been charged those fees and never agreed to them and wanted the ENTIRE YEARS SURCHARGES REFUNDED.
They did.
The following month the fees/surcharges appeared again on my invoice….so I called their competitor …who charges 5-cents more per gallon ….but laughed when I asked about “fuel surcharges and hazardous mat’ls fees”.
”NO!…. we don’t play those silly games.”
I switched propane dealers. That was 3 years ago and every few months I get a post card from the original dealer inviting me to “Come Try” their full service “with no delivery fees”.
I posted this entire explanation in our local paper classifieds. and I NAMED NAMES! Fugg ‘em!
(ps: the original dealer with whom I did business for 30+ years was Bill Smith Butane (no problems) who was bought out by Pinnacle (the greedy). I now get my propane from a small Mom&Pop outfit known as “4-T”.
