Save hundreds of dollars switching from an auto-fill home heating oil company

What is auto-fill?

If you search the web you'll find several articles promoting usage of auto-fill service for home heating oil. This service is convenient, oil is just delivered to your house whenever the company deems you needing it. However this convenience is costing you hundreds to thousands of dollars a year.

Auto-fill is more expensive per gallon

While it is more convenient to not think about your oil level and place a quick order online or over the phone, that convenience is costing you hundreds to thousands of dollars per year. You may be getting the best price that the company you use offers, and they may claim they don't charge anything for the service. While all of this may be true, it still means you are not shopping the market to find the most competitive price at the time you need oil. If you ran a heating oil company and knew that each month you had what are practically guaranteed orders would you aggressively price your heating oil, or would you be happy to take a few extra cents per gallon per customer adding thousands to your pocket each month.

As an extreme example, in Braintree Massachusetts, the difference in heating oil price right now between the most competitive supplier, Ohara Fuel, and the least, Albert Culver Company, is a difference of $1.20 a gallon. That is a saving of $240 per 200 gallon fill up. An average home in Massachusetts uses 717 gallons per heating season according to mass.gov. That means those using Albert Culver Company are paying over $800 per year extra. If you have a larger home the savings are even more substantial.

Get Paid $200 to make a phone call

Let's use the average data from above. The average customer using 717 gallons per year could fill their oil in 4 orders per year. Their savings is $800 per heating season. This means avoiding 4 phone calls a year is costing $800, or $200 per call. In my experience the phone calls take just a few minutes, let's round up to 10 minutes per call, that means each phone call is like getting paid $1200 per hour! Is that convenience really worth the cost?