FEDERATED CO-OP

We don’t have to call them or we don’t have to watch our tanks to see if it’s getting low or whatever, they are just here every month. Then the summer special that they had this year, that was very nice. You can choose to do the pre-buy or not, it’s whatever your budget allows and whatever you want to do.

We've done business with this company for approximately 18 years; while their delivery service has been good, their accounting system has never been good. For a few years we did yearly pre-buys, but their statements were always confusing to us and it was often unclear whether propane deliveries were being properly accounted for. We switched to their budget plan as this seemed a more convenient way to pay and account for our propane usage. This worked well for a while, but in recent years we've received a number of "past due" statements - despite the fact that our budget payments were set by them and deducted from our checking account by them with no instances of insufficient funds. Most years we had a credit balance at the end of the season rather than a catch-up amount due. The terms of their budget plan clearly stated that if usage or prices were significantly higher than anticipated (as happened with this year's extremely cold weather), the budget amount would be adjusted to avoid a large catch-up amount due at the end of the season. Rather than do that, they called us in February and left a message informing us that our budget balance was not sufficient to cover a new delivery and that they would not make any deliveries until we made payment arrangements - it felt as if we were being called deadbeats. We made arrangements for a very large increase in our budget payments, all of which have been deducted by them. Nevertheless, our most recent statement from them came with "PAST DUE" stamped in large red letters in two different places. We've been told this is how their accounting system works, and they can't adjust it. We've also been told they have discontinued their budget plan - which is a good thing since they evidently don't know how to properly administer it. In addition to the annoyance of receiving past due notices when your payments are up-to-date, one has to wonder whether a company with this bad an accounting system is actually providing fair pricing. Despite the inconvenience of changing suppliers, we will be looking to do just that if at all possible. We would not recommend using this company for propane if there is an alternative supplier available.