Bulk LPG - Cheapest suppliers / supply route?

shingwell wrote: »

Hi,

Just found this forum - brilliant! At last it is possible to do what they don't want you to do: compare prices!

Anyway I have an out-of-contract Calor tank with a telemetry device on it, which has worked very well up to now. <snip>
I was wondering: if I switched to one of the smaller independents and they buy the tank off Calor, do they get the telemetry device too? And if so do they have the facility to make use of it?

I've been with Calor for a number of years and although I can't fault the service, always suspected I might be paying a bit over the odds. Letter today confirms it: now 57.25ppl (Herefordshire/Worcestershire border).

Thanks!

Hi shingwell - welcome to the forum!

Thanks for the warm words about the usefulness of this site. Remember you can always send someone a pm (private message) if you don't want to post on the open forum. We know some of the suppliers read this - but we also have some very useful people who work in the industry who post.

I suspect Calor's device only works for Calor - but the best bet would be to ask some of the independents when you phone. If you put your postcode into http://www.uklpg.org you'll get contact info for companies which will supply your address (and then of course there are farmers' co-ops like Mole Valley which bulk buy). You should have quite a few - lucky!

Please post the offers you get (prices and rental charges, and maximum rise too if relevant). And then people should be able to make comments about the companies. Let the suppliers know roughly how many litres you use a year. Independents may be willing to let you have their previous prices too - just as Extra Fuel and Cardiff Gas have done. Then we can plot them against the wholesale price (see here). It would be nice to plot some of the majors' prices too!

Suppliers may prefer to give you a new tank (many companies remove tanks at 20 years for a complete 'refurb') - especially as it is apparently cheaper to buy a new tank (possibly made in Turkey) than pay the inflated rate resulting from the Competition Commission formula.

PS If you found this forum through Google what search terms did you use, please? I wonder if we can be smarter and make it easier to find.
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Little Vermin has given me an update on Extra Fuel's price which is now 48.99 per litre. That would change the overall cost for a year to £3065. I would have edited in the previous post but I'm blowed if I can work out how to do it!:o

Ah!!!! Just discovered how to do it - I think I might be becoming computer literate..........

Just spoken to Mole Valley Farmers. They're currently offering 46.9ppl thru Calor. The lad on the jobs opportunity scheme said he couldn't tell me the price for the tank rental because I wasn't a member, but said it would be of the order £55 - £60. No caps were discussed.
IN

Ace_gas_guzzler wrote: »

The long-awaited figures!

Callow 44p tank rental (inc VAT) £50.40
Calor 47.4p £64.77
Carver 42.55p £239.40
Countrywide 46p £52.52
Energas 45p £52.52
Extra Fuel 48.99p £126
Lister 44p £75
Mole Valley 46.9p

The above figures are based on an annual usage of 6000 litres and an underground tank of 2000 litres.

Totals for each company per year, including all VAT charges are as follows:

Callow £2823
Calor £2929 (includes deduction of £250 free
gas).
Carver £2919
Countrywide £2951
Energas £2888
Extra Fuel £3065
Lister £2847
Mole Valley £2955 plus whatever the tank hire is. No-one could tell me but they are going to call me back with the answer.

Carver's .<snip>. Their 5 year contract is aparently legal as it is non-exclusive. i.e. if another supplier is delivering at a lower price than Carver, I'm free to go to another supplier. Carver will, if notified of the cheaper price, endeavour to match the lower price. <snip>

Carver is charging a rental of £239.40 - let's call that £240. If other companies are charging £60 rental then Carver is getting an extra £180 p.a. ..... and if you use 6000l p.a. that's 18000/6000 ppl i.e. 3ppl.

The price they are offering is 42.55ppl - but if we add the extra 3ppl the total cost per litre is 45.55, which is a discount of 4.35 compared to their on-line quoted rate today of 49.90ppl (see here). Of course you need to add around 1ppl to the other companies' prices (if they are charging £60ish rental) to give their total cost per litre (and we'd need to adjust Carver's on-line figure too).

Carver have apparently said their 5 yr contract is legal as it is non-exclusive .... but would another company be prepared to provide a retail customer with LPG at less than 45.55ppl if they realised (as they would!) what Carver were up to? Suppliers sell it among themselves at much less (that's not so surprising if you look at the ANSI chart - and realise that some subcontract deliveries, and most of the majors fill up from each others' depots - well, they do in Devon and Cornwall!).

What guarantee have you got that Carver won't narrow the discount between the price they charge you and their on-line price?

Maybe you need to ask the other independents their view - would they be interested in filling Carver's tank if they could undercut Carver's price? Would Calor be interested?

Personally I would contact OFT (sharon.dias@oft.gsi.gov.uk ) to see if this business model is acceptable after the Competition Commission ruled that the maximum exclusivity period was 24 months (see my recent post here). OFT is currently keen to see that the CC Order is being adhered to, and contracts are more transparent.

BTW I think your notional yearly figures need revising. Calor offers £250 'free gas' - but that has to be split into £125 p.a. ... and we can now add (at least) £60 to Mole Valley's cost:

Callow £2823
Calor £3054 (includes deduction of £250 free
gas over 2 yr).
Carver £2919
Countrywide £2951
Energas £2888
Extra Fuel £3065
Lister £2847
Mole Valley £3015, or more

Adding crystal ball technology to these figures I think we can see that the Calor figure will probably go up irrespective of ANSI, I suspect Countrywide will do the same, I fear the moles will build molehills with Calor, but I think I can see the figures for the others going up or down. So that's clear then!

And even after all this effort to get prices, get comments from others .. we are STILL mushrooms. In the dark. What a business!
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thozza wrote: »

I have been following the LPG price and this thread for the last year, after purchasing a house which eats LPG (6000l+), but have not seen the useful information and graphs on the Bloomberg website mentioned, except as a footnot to the OFT graphs:-

bloomberg.com/quote/LPGIECPP:IND/chart
bloomberg.com/quote/LPGP1ST:IND/chart

(it won't let me post links so you will have to add www. to the beginning)

Thankfully they show a steep drop from the peak in late February.

Fantastic! Welcome to the forum, thozza.

Here are the links:

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/LPGIECPP%3aIND/chart

and:

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/LPGP1ST%3aIND/chart

You can alter the time frame from one day to 5 years - and also have YTD (year to date). The prices are in US dollars (the plots shown on the forum have had the ANSI prices converted to pence per litre e.g. here)

What a resource! LPG users can now refer their supplier to this publicly available resource when they are told of a price rise (or NOT told of when the price should be falling!). Suppliers could always pooh-pooh the plots on the forum - questioning where the data came from, the conversion factors used, etc, etc.
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