Home Heating Oil Companies Can No Longer Provide Their Basic Service

In early June, worried about the rapid increase in the cost of oil, I called my home heating oil provider here in Michigan and ordered a delivery to fill our tank, which is currently almost on empty. The price to fill the tank at that date was just shy of $1100, and last winter we needed to fill it four times. The house we live in is about 1000 square feet and well-insulated, and we’ve added extra insulation and stopped using hot water. Last winter cost us about $2300 to get through: This winter will easily be double that, if not worse, barring a miracle.

We don’t have a gas line to our house, and even if we could afford to install one this year, we would also have to replace the furnace, so my thought was, better to start out with a full tank of heating oil at the outrageous June price than an empty tank in November when the temperature starts to plummet and prices might be anything at all.

Three weeks later, no oil delivery. I called our company and was asked if I needed the oil to heat water. I said, “What does that have to do with it?” The woman on the other end of the line said they rarely deliver oil in the summer unless it’s truly needed, which I know is untrue: Usually oil companies like it if you order in summer because it’s one less winter delivery they need to make when everyone and their brother is calling after the first snowfall. Often you even get a discount for summer delivery.

I said, please, deliver it. We’re nervous. Fill our tank. We have payment in full.

Another month went by, no oil. I called again. They said no trucks had been out our way. (We live in a city of under 100,000 people.) I said, well, when might trucks be out this way? She didn’t know. A couple weeks maybe?

Now it’s three weeks later and still no oil, and tonight on CBS news I learned that because of the credit crunch, many small home fuel oil delivery companies are unable to obtain credit to buy the oil their customers need. Some customers on the east coast have paid as much as $5000 in advance for winter heating oil, only to find out the company has gone belly up, their money is gone, and they still don’t have oil. Basically, they will have to pay for it twice because you can’t get through winter in New England without some way to heat your home, but can you imagine, in this economy, having to come up with 10K on the spur of the moment just to make sure your pipes don’t freeze this winter?

So now, I have to start calling oil companies in our locale and find one that actually has oil that they will actually deliver to our home. It’s sailing into mid-August now, and in another six weeks it will no longer be a topic for an economics blog; it will be time to get out mittens, long underwear, and start burning furniture in a hot-wired wood burner.

Over the not-very-long run, we will have to find a different way to heat our house. Sooner would be better than later. But for the short term, we need oil, and at least one of us is getting scared. I’m not writing this to cause a panic. Panic never solves anything. I just thought some of our readers might like a heads up. I know I certainly would have liked one in June, as in the truth straight out, instead of waiting to see it on the Nightly News from Katie Couric, who is not exactly my best friend.

I’m a Brian Williams kind of girl myself.

To read the complete article at the CBS New website about the coming home heating oil crisis, you can go to Home Heating Oil Hell at the CBS website.

Then, without making to much of a fuss or freaking out overly, you might want to get on the phone and keep calling oil companies until you find one who will deliver some heating oil to your home, now. Today.

That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll let you know how it turns out in a future post, along with our best and worst ideas for what to do to change this next year.