Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Motherfuckers

Bob and I get back from New Jersey at around 7 p.m. on a Sunday night. We try to straighten up the house a little, watch some TV and head to bed.
Elizabeth wakes up at 4 am the next morning. I get out of bed and tend to her very important needs and then go to the stove to put on some hot water for tea.
Only trouble is, the burner won't light. The pilots on the stove are all out. I try to relight them, but no luck.
I get Bob out of bed to see what's going on. He goes outside to check the propane tank (very grumpily I might add) and discovers that it has been disconnected from our house.
A propane company, Amerigas, came out to our house while we were gone and disconnected our tank, leaving only a sticker behind. The sticker wasn't even stuck to the side of the tank, it was placed under the hood that covers the gauges.
So, I call the company and after HOURS of explaining the situation to them I finally get someone out to my house to reconnect our tank.
They tell me that even though our realtor told us we OWNED the tank, that THEY actually own the tank and we would have to become their customers. We have lived in this house for over a year and have had the tank filled numerous times by another (cheaper) company.
Though I am unhappy, I agree. Then Monday we get a bill from Amerigas charging us $90 for the propane that was in the tank when they closed the "previous account".
To sum up my rage...they closed the "previous account" during our trip Back East, thus ALL the propane in the tank at that time had been purchased by US from another company. This new company was essentially charging us for propane we had already purchased from another company under the wrongheaded thought that the closure of the account that should have been closed over a year ago had anything to do with the current amount of fuel in the tank, nevermind the intervening year. Did I lose anyone here?
Understandably, I became incensed.
I tried to call the offices of Amerigas numerous times and was forwarded to a national customer service center. I managed to leave ONE message at the local office, which was never returned.
I tried to call them again this morning, and was immediately forwarded to the national center, despite the fact that I was calling during normal business hours.
So I went down to the office, toddler in tow.
I explained to them the situation, that they were trying to charge us for gas we had already paid for...
They were rude, belligerent, and not helpful. They said it was their tank and their gas (somehow?) even though they had not actually filled that tank in over a year.
The manager, who was even MORE rude than the customer "service" representative, came out of his office to tell me that either I could pay a $61 tank rental fee or they could come out and remove the tank.
I asked them to show me a document that said I agreed to pay a rental fee, they could produce no such document, yet insisted that this was the only way to proceed.
I left their office in tears, and went to Bob's job site where he told me he would go down to Amerigas and tell them to come get their tank and shove it up their asses. It's a 250 gallon propane tank, and I expect that inserting it into a normal human sized anus would cause tremendous pain, which I figure is the feeling that Bob was going for with his off-color suggestion.
Instead, I proposed that I would go to the company that we had been using and explain the situation to them and see what we could work out there, seeing as how we didn't WANT to be customers of Amerigas.
The people at Owens Energy were like a ray of sunshine, so nice, so understanding. The owner came out to our house and took the serial number of our tank and said he would call Amerigas and find out if the tank even belonged to them. Mr. Owens (his real name) told me that he suspected it was not their tank and they had perhaps filled the tank at one time and mistakenly assumed it was their tank. He also said that he had filled the tank for many owners of our house and that if Amerigas had disconnected and then reconnected the tank to the out-dated regulator that was on the tank, they could get in big trouble for using unapproved equipment.
So now we're waiting on finding out whether Amerigas has screwed us and then tried to screw us some more with a tank that isn't even theirs. Even if it IS theirs, we're going to have them come and haul it off and get Owens Energy to bring out their tank because quite frankly, I can't deal with the people from Amerigas, they are motherfuckers. Hopefully, they'll stick their tank up their asses, just like Bob wanted.
Don't I just have the MOST fun ever! Whoo hoo!

4 comments:

eva said...

Christ woman. Does anything good EVER happen to you? Shit. At least I still love you. *smooooch*

Jessica said...

Well, I just talked to the people at Owens and apparently Amerigas is trying to give them the runaround as well. The gal there said that at first they were just trying to sort this out for us, since we have been their customers for a year, but that now the owner of Owens Energy is "disgusted" with the people from Amerigas and is pretty much on a rampage against them. So THAT's a good thing!

cube said...

Those bastards!

Forest Lady said...

Oh my God, your husband had a great suggestion. I wonder if it would work with the people who sold us a defective sofa bed. Can I borrow your propane tank for the insertion? ha ha ha