Bulk LPG - Cheapest suppliers / supply route?

JerryW

Sorting_Hat said:

Yes I have seen the firms now asking pertinent questions at the switching stage and rejecting tanks too.

It is what happened to me .. many years ago I accepted a quote from Shell Energy (now Avanti) and they sent a very nice chap along to make sure the tank was compliant .. he said it was the least compliant tank he had seen in 30 years!

But I got him to be specific about the various shortcomings and got in touch with Calor, who were the current supplier. After some discussion they not only agreed to renew the contract at the lower price Shell had quoted me, but they sent an engineer who agreed to both replace and resite the tank, and also replace all of the pipework etween there and the house. All I had to pay for was the concrete base for the new tank.

I have seen many negative comments on this forum about one supplier or another, but they are all run by people, and in my experience they will respond well to polite approaches and questions. There is too much hostility in the world these days .. they are not your enemy, not even Flogas ;-)

Burbage_Fox_2

Hi everyone, has anyone agreed any LPG contracts recently as my 2 year contract is up at the beginning of September and will be negotiating in August 

Sorting_Hat

Yes you can initiate a switch within 28 days of the end of your existing  agreement but the new firm cant put gas in the tank until after that original end date.

There is a part of the switch paperwork that covers this.

LessImpecunious

Burbage_Fox_2 said:

Hi everyone, has anyone agreed any LPG contracts recently as my 2 year contract is up at the beginning of September and will be negotiating in August 

Wonder whether it's worth staring a new thread on this as no-one seems to be responding?! I'm interested in answers myself!

Sorting_Hat

Its handy to keep it here, look how messy the AFP topic got.

rinroo

Burbage_Fox_2 said:

Hi everyone, has anyone agreed any LPG contracts recently as my 2 year contract is up at the beginning of September and will be negotiating in August 

I signed up a while back for 48p fixed for two years this was with Extragas but i'm lead to believe they don't cover all of the country. I'm in Lancs, so they cover my area.  I did get a couple of quotes around 52p so it's worth shopping about.

LittleVermin

rinroo said:

<snip>

I signed up a while back for 48p fixed for two years this was with Extragas but i'm lead to believe they don't cover all of the country. I'm in Lancs, so they cover my area.  I did get a couple of quotes around 52p so it's worth shopping about.

Extragas are independents based in Manchester who subcontract deliveries all over the country and it's worth asking them if they'll do that for you. I'm in Cornwall and I've been with them for quite a few consecutive contracts (so obviously happy!) and now deliveries are by Avantigas, formerly deliveries by Flogas. Despite some dire warnings on this forum about being a second class customer I got treated well when supplies were short some years back - and when heavy snow restricted deliveries: my tank was never allowed to run out. [Footnote: many years ago the LPG dealer in a farmers' co-op which supplied nationwide, including to some lucky non-farming forumites, at 21ppl let the cat out of the bag by telling a forumite the co-op paid a major supplier 14ppl ...and the major supplier did all the paperwork! The 21ppl price was supposed to be confidential - but leaked out in a private msg. And - of course! - the 14ppl should never have been said!]

LPGnewbie2022

Last year was going to go with the quote from Carver gas who offered a price for 2 year contract. Thing is man turned up took a look at the pipe going under the drive way from the tank and said "it's made of metal, it will need replacing" and on that basis wrote back later saying they'd be unable to offer us a contract.

Moved in a year and a quarter ago and still got 20% of gas according to the meter in the tank. Never signed up for anyone yet. Carver man said to stay wil Calor as they should change the pipe to plastic. But the price of Calor was 25% more than Carver.

Do I have to have the pipe under the drive changed to plastic? Carver man said it was going to be needed by legislation.  

LessImpecunious

It will start to leak eventually - which is what happened to us, shortly after Calor renewed our 30+ year old tank. Although strictly speaking we were responsible for the pipes rather than Calor (according to our contract), they renewed the whole pipe (very long and through broken-up bedrock mostly) and reinstated the ground (reasonably well) at their own cost. One of the workmen said this was possibly because the tank renewal disturbance might have been responsible for the leak, but the pipe was very rusty and we were accordingly very grateful to have it replaced...Maybe not so much if we'd had to pay for it though!

Woggle

LessImpecunious said:

It will start to leak eventually - which is what happened to us, shortly after Calor renewed our 30+ year old tank. Although strictly speaking we were responsible for the pipes rather than Calor (according to our contract), they renewed the whole pipe (very long and through broken-up bedrock mostly) and reinstated the ground (reasonably well) at their own cost. One of the workmen said this was possibly because the tank renewal disturbance might have been responsible for the leak, but the pipe was very rusty and we were accordingly very grateful to have it replaced...Maybe not so much if we'd had to pay for it though!

I do find the whole process very bizarre. I realise your issue was with pipes rather than the tank, but we keep being told by Calor that the tank does not meet current regulations i.e. too close to the boundary & is now of the age it needs replacing. We've said that we are happy for them to move it & replace it but the cost falls to us (and that is without the cost of connecting to a new gas point). We tend to go around in circles on this - whilst they are happy to keep filling it up then I'm not going to move it. Of course the only down side is that I can't move suppliers so am tied into Calor when it comes to renewing contracts.

As an aside - a few questions above on price. I was on 1 year fixed and 1 year variable. The recent variable cost for a refill was 55p per litre.