Heating oil, do you ever check the gauge on the tank?

[Charlotte987]

My sis visited my family home over the winter and they heat with an oil furnace. She checked the gauge on the fuel tank in the basement, it was a quarter full.

The heating oil company delivered and pumped a full tank of heating oil. When the delivery guy came for a signature my sis mentioned that they couldn't have pumped a full tank, as the tank was a quarter full. Oil company guy said the gauge must be faulty, so he replaced it. It read full, same as the replaced gauge. She argued, he had delivered a full tank of so many liters he said.

She looked at all the previous bills that my parents had kept in a file, the heating oil company always pumped a full tank of heating oil into the basement tank and charged for a full tank. My parents never thought to read the gauge, they trusted the company. Who has been ripping them off for decades. Nice little scam they have going, and they are only company in that area that sells and delivers heating oil. They must have been doing this to pretty much every one in that town who heats with oil.

 

[heat seeker]

Don't they charge by the gallon? Metered at the truck?

This is like pulling into a gas station and paying according to how your gas gauge reads - inaccurate at best.

Oil tank gauges are inaccurate, mostly. I have marked mine at various points after receiving metered deliveries. However, the truck has a calibrated, sealed meter that tells how many gallons we've received.

 

[Chimney Smoke]

I've never heard of oil delivered by the "full tank". Do they charge for 275 gallons every time the fill? The trucks measure the gallons delivered around here.

 

[Warm_in_NH]

It's a very regulated industry usually over seen by the dept of weights and measures. (They're the guys that measure gas station pumps as well to make sure a gallon in a gallon and put the sticker on the pump)

I've heard of them running over sized jets in furnaces so they burn more fuel and need service more often.

I've also heard of the same company over charging for fuel by running the pump (nozzle) back into the truck, racking up 40 gallons before putting a drop into the home tank.

In both instances they were caught, fined, ordered to pay restitution, etc....Amazingly, because they are a very prominent family in town, they're still in business.

 

[Dougsey]

We need to know the tank size and how many gallons they claimed to have delivered for this discussion to have any relevance.

 

[velvetfoot]

Don't all those bills have some sort of print out on them of the exact amount of oil pumped?
This is confusing.

 

[peakbagger]

In Maine and NH, the heating oil trucks are equipped with calibrated meters that are checked by the state. The volume of oil pumped is on the ticket. I have caught the companies in the past where the rate on the meter is not the rate on the truck or advertised. The billing has to be based on the meter slip.

I have two oil tanks and both gauges no longer work. I have a wood rack built over them to changing them out would be very difficult. I just remove a plug and stick the tanks every year or so as I don't use much oil (last fill was a partial one 2.5 years ago).

 

[Charlotte987]

Not exactly sure of how this all went, getting this all second-hand. The delivery bills for oil were all hand-written and the writing is quite poor, sometimes indecipherable, the oil bills that were mailed to the home list the amount of gallons/liters and the cost. Matched with the delivery orders, the bills were always slightly different, don't think anyone ever tried to match them up, they simply paid the bills.
There is talk of some legal action, although there probably is not enough accurate information for a case. The company that sold the oil was local and the owner passed away quite recently, the company that bought out the local company seems to charge quite a bit less for heating oil and everyone's oil bills have been reduced by a noticeable amount. The local company has been around for a long time, since the 1930's or so, the owner was a friend of my father's, and lived on the same street as we did. So its a bit of a shock to discover this, and if anything can/will be done about it.

 

[Dune]

Sorry this doesn't make any sense. In order for the driver to be truthful, the tank would have had to be run dry, in which case the appliance wouldn't start, every single time they delivered, apparently. I suggest a big law firm, subpoena the companies records and file a massive class action suit.

 

[bsruther]

My gauge is faulty. I use a long dowel to check the level, in the spring.

 

[legrandice]

I check mine a few times during the winter, but don't trust it for accuracy. I try to put 100 gal in or so when it gets around 1/4. I did fill it up early this month though!

 

[Charlotte987]

The more I look into this, the more I realize that there was no oversight in the past. The town is a remote community, without police, government employees of any sort, one doctor a dentist and a few schoolteachers and a convent with nuns and a priest. If there are or were regulations in place on the selling of heating oil, there was no-one there to enforce compliance of government regulations on the sale of the oil.
This man's small business was the only one in the area. Makes me more than a little angry when I realize that my hard-working parents and many others in the area were being overcharged by someone we knew personally.
Many of the locals, use alternative energy generated by solar and wind and even small hydro dams, others use wood or pellets and some propane. Neither of my parents live in the home now, so its a moot point if the people who were overcharged will do anything about it.

 

[maple1]

We don't know that they were overcharged based on info posted so far - it's missing some basics, like exactly how much fuel was charged for & exact tank capacity.

And maybe type of tank & guage? Because having said all that, when my oil tank guage read 1/4 full, there was more than that left in it. I could go for quite a while with the guage reading empty.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Sorry this doesn't make any sense. In order for the driver to be truthful, the tank would have had to be run dry, in which case the appliance wouldn't start, every single time they delivered, apparently. I suggest a big law firm, subpoena the companies records and file a massive class action suit.

Exactly. Charging by a full tank load is nonsense unless they had run the tank completely dry every time, which can happen, but a stupid thing to do every time you need oil.

 

[sportbikerider78]

I have 2, 250 gal tanks. The way I have them fill is to tell them how many gallons to deliver.