My Oil Dealer is expecting high oil prices this Winter

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terryjd98

terryjd98

Member
Jul 1, 2008
91
Ontario Canada
Got a letter from my Home Oil Dealer today. They have set my monthly payments at $422.00 for 10 months. Last year I made $300.00 a month payments for 10 months. It seems they are expecting heating oil to stay up in price. So far with the drop in Crude Oil prices and gas prices diesel is still staying pretty close to the same price it has been over the last couple of months.
Are any of you seeing gas prices going down but diesel and heating oil prices staying up in your area? Doesn't make much sense to me with the way the price of Crude oil has dropped but is there ever going to be any chance of figuring these Oil companies out.
Here is an interesting artical about the EIA expecting only short term price relief. http://www.wisconsinagconnection.com/story-national.php?Id=1913&yr=2008
 
I see gas at around $3.59 a gal. lower if you pay cash on rt 18 in weymouth area, and deisel still at around $4.20 give or take, yesterday.Wow $400 plus a month that's gonna leave a mark.
 
This is the time of the year when refineries traditionally start shifting from max gasoline to max distillate (diesel and heating oil) mode. Demand is down for export diesel right now so pretty soon distillate inventories are going to start going up and it should have the effect of pushing the price of heating oil and diesel down.

Believe it or not the high cost of crude is bitting the refiners in the butt pretty much as much as it is the consumer. And if they screw up on the product mix it is going to bite them more and give some relief to the consumer.
 
In Orange County my local company wanted to charge me $4.89 a gallon at the beginning of July for a prepay. Now they are charging $3.69 if you pay cash. It will probably go down to @ $3.30 a gallon when winter arrives and go up from there. The only way it will dip below that is if oil plummets to $60.00 a barrel. Check out the history of home heating oil in NY at this site:

http://www.nyserda.org/Energy_Information/nyepd.asp
 
My local Heating Oil Dealer wanted to charge me $4.53 as per two days ago, Yike....
I switched my delivery over to a discount one, where I got on the same day a quote of $3.49. My deliveries are always around 300 gallons. Every one can make the calculation what I will save.
This year I will heat my home with a Wood Pellet Stove. We will see how that goes. Hope that there is an additional saving possible. Sadly I waited like the Mob, till the last Minute to make up my mind in getting a Pellet Stove.
 
Ahhh Heating Oil was 3.52 a gallon today in northeastern pa. Not as good as .80 a gallon 5 years ago, but getting better!

Funny though a cord of wood is still around $125 - 150.
 
Its $4.40 a gallon here, down from about $4.70 a month ago. I used 1400-1500 gallons last year, the new pellet stove is welcome aition to an alternative heat source.
 
terryjd98 said:
Got a letter from my Home Oil Dealer today. They have set my monthly payments at $422.00 for 10 months. Last year I made $300.00 a month payments for 10 months. It seems they are expecting heating oil to stay up in price.
Click to expand...
Mine just added a $40/mo surcharge to my budget account. They'll be so surprised when my pellet stove starts displacing my oil usage :)
 
How about this everyone.....the company I have just filled my tank (360 gal) w/o asking me, even though I had not locked in, or signed any monthly budget plan papers, and charged me $4.14/gal.

Then, 2 days later, they send me the paperwork to sign-up for their monthly budget plan with a price cap (who knows what it's going to be), and THEN happen to mention at the bottom of the brochure that there will be an additional $360 "service fee" on top of everything for oil, or $150 for propane.

YIKES!! And I don't even think I can apply the monthly payments to my now $1500 bill, since they delivered the oil before I signed up. Methinks I'm getting screwed.

Anyone have an opinion on what you'd do in this situation?
 
macman said:
How about this everyone.....the company I have just filled my tank (360 gal) w/o asking me, even though I had not locked in, or signed any monthly budget plan papers, and charged me $4.14/gal.

Then, 2 days later, they send me the paperwork to sign-up for their monthly budget plan with a price cap (who knows what it's going to be), and THEN happen to mention at the bottom of the brochure that there will be an additional $360 "service fee" on top of everything for oil, or $150 for propane.

YIKES!! And I don't even think I can apply the monthly payments to my now $1500 bill, since they delivered the oil before I signed up. Methinks I'm getting screwed.

Anyone have an opinion on what you'd do in this situation?
Click to expand...

I would not pay if they did not get permission to fill your tank. If you are on an automatic delivery then you will probably have to pay.
 
You may be right about that, because I AM on auto delivery, but I spoke to them a few weeks ago, and told them I didn't need any oil until after I decided on my plan......
 
DiggerJim said:
terryjd98 said:
Got a letter from my Home Oil Dealer today. They have set my monthly payments at $422.00 for 10 months. Last year I made $300.00 a month payments for 10 months. It seems they are expecting heating oil to stay up in price.
Click to expand...
Mine just added a $40/mo surcharge to my budget account. They'll be so surprised when my pellet stove starts displacing my oil usage :)
Click to expand...

I bet that will be a surprise for them. A customer actually did something about it!

Another example of fighting fire with fire. :)
 
macman said:
How about this everyone.....the company I have just filled my tank (360 gal) w/o asking me, even though I had not locked in, or signed any monthly budget plan papers, and charged me $4.14/gal.
Then, 2 days later, they send me the paperwork to sign-up for their monthly budget plan with a price cap (who knows what it's going to be), and THEN happen to mention at the bottom of the brochure that there will be an additional $360 "service fee" on top of everything for oil, or $150 for propane.
YIKES!! And I don't even think I can apply the monthly payments to my now $1500 bill, since they delivered the oil before I signed up. Methinks I'm getting screwed.
Anyone have an opinion on what you'd do in this situation?
Click to expand...

Thats similar to what happened to me in the spring. The oil company just had to do one last fill up when the price was at the highest. I am on auto deleivery so not much I can do about it just had to pay my final bill. I haven't heard about any service charges yet that will be added to my account. I only have a 200 gallon oil tank but that still adds up to a lot if empty.
I am really hoping that the Enviro Evolution will do a good enough job heating 1400sq feet 2 story to give the oil man a big suprise when they go to fill the tank. The hard part is going to be to know how much pay the oil company a month since this is my first year with the pellet stove.
 
Here’s prediction for what it’s worth.

During the last election we saw a drop in fuel prices just before the election. Why is anybody’s guess, but after the election was over fuel shot back up.

Author Paul Roberts wrote a book about 5 years ago titled "The End of Oil" so far he has been spot on. He predicted a period of about ten years where we would see what he called a rocky road where fuel will rise and depress the economy then consumption goes down and fuel prices drop, followed by the economy coming back up followed by fuel prices rising and the economy going down. Anyway you get the picture.

I think anyone who believes fuel is going to stay down is pretty short sighted. I am sure there are people out there that are saying "look the price is going back down so I’m staying with oil". My prediction is their the ones that are going to be crying the loudest around January of next year.

Everybody’s got an ouch point. That’s when they say to xel! With this I’m shutting off the oil. I already hit my ouch point.
 
Rich said:
Here’s prediction for what it’s worth.

During the last election we saw a drop in fuel prices just before the election. Why is anybody’s guess, but after the election was over fuel shot back up.

.
Click to expand...


Seems to happen every November, whether it's an election year or not.
Convenient statistic.
 
Rich said:
Here’s prediction for what it’s worth.

During the last election we saw a drop in fuel prices just before the election. Why is anybody’s guess, but after the election was over fuel shot back up.

Author Paul Roberts wrote a book about 5 years ago titled "The End of Oil" so far he has been spot on. He predicted a period of about ten years where we would see what he called a rocky road where fuel will rise and depress the economy then consumption goes down and fuel prices drop, followed by the economy coming back up followed by fuel prices rising and the economy going down. Anyway you get the picture.

I think anyone who believes fuel is going to stay down is pretty short sighted. I am sure there are people out there that are saying "look the price is going back down so I’m staying with oil". My prediction is their the ones that are going to be crying the loudest around January of next year.

Everybody’s got an ouch point. That’s when they say to xel! With this I’m shutting off the oil. I already hit my ouch point.
Click to expand...

Yup.....agree very much. I said in prior blogs.....I feel oil will be at 5 bucks a gal. by peak season and I still believe that. And your right.....people will breath a little bit and some will stick with oil....then come dec. and Jan...pow! And they'll be stuck.
 
I had gotten my budget price quote of $4.79 a couple weeks ago. Today, we got another notice saying that since the price of oil had gone down since the original price had been sent out that the budget plan price would be reduced by .20 to $4.59. I'm still tryng to decide whether to go on the budget this year or not.
 
kpereyra said:
I had gotten my budget price quote of $4.79 a couple weeks ago. Today, we got another notice saying that since the price of oil had gone down since the original price had been sent out that the budget plan price would be reduced by .20 to $4.59. I'm still tryng to decide whether to go on the budget this year or not.
Click to expand...

I know how you feel. Last year I was paying $2.79 a gallon ($235 a month fo 11 months) on a budget plan with my oil company. This year they wanted to charge me $4.89 a gallon ($435 a month for 11 months). I had to make a decision on what I wanted to do rather quickly since the time to sign up for the budget plan expired at the end of July. I decided to forego the budget plan and automatic delivery and purchase a MT Vernon AE instead. My thought process was that if I'm going to spend $4500 this year I will not be giving it to the "Oil Man" and have nothing to show for it. I also thought that I would get a better deal for cash delivery on any oil I need this season. I do believe that oil prices will come down before it gets cold but will spike back up in the middle of winter. I'm hope to mainly use pellet for for heat and to supplement it oil when need be.
 
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