Propane woes
Welcome to the world of corporate raiding, via AmeriGas. Many Taos area customers who depend upon propane for cooking, water heat and home heat got a rude awakening four years ago when the former New Mexico Propane (and prior to that, Adobe Propane) company was bought up by AmeriGas, which proceeded to increase prices above other local propane servers and extend delivery dates. Many of us are locked into AmeriGas because we rent our tanks from the company and are unable to purchase gas from other providers. For two years in a row I called up the local office and complained, to no avail.
Then things got worse. They closed the Taos office, fired the longtime employees and forced all customers to order online. On Nov. 21, I made an online order but was unable to communicate via the website that I needed to expedite it as I had below 10 percent capacity. There is no place on the website to address any individual questions or issues. So I tried calling them. The local phone number on our invoices and on their website is a Taosbased number, but it now sends you to some central call center in anywhere USA where it is impossible to speak with a person. The recorded message states that they’ve implemented a new voice identification system to better serve their customers. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t understand anything you say. You then must wait until they say, OK, let’s try another way and you can punch in a number to get to a specific service. When you get there you’re informed that there is a wait time of over 80 minutes. I actually kept the phone on speaker for two hours one day until a person answered. I explained my issue and she said, “I’ll transfer you to that department” and I begged, “No, no” but she did anyway and the wait time was again over 80 minutes. I hung up.
AmeriGas failed to deliver my gas during the estimated time frame. It took them 13 days. In the meantime, I called up local Pendleton Propane, filed an application and the technician came to inspect my system and arrange for renting me a tank the next day— at a much cheaper price than AmeriGas. What all this demonstrates is that the rationales corporations use to convince us that they will make our lives more efficient and save us money if we consolidate, go national or go global, are lies. It only reinforces what we already know: we must support local.