Customer Service And Buckman Family Fuels
Posted on Saturday, 8 of December , 2007 at 11:28 am
COMMENTARY
CHESTERTOWN—-Customer service is a function of how well an organization meets the needs of its customers.
That’s one definition of customer service.
Wikipedia has defined customer service as the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. According to Turban et al, 2002, “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction—that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation”.
What’s happened to customer service today? Merchants, vendors and professionals are eager for your money but turn their backs on the customer when there’s a problem. Do they value their customers? So do, some don’t and then there’s Buckman Family Fuels in Chestertown.
If you purchase a beef roast or a chicken at the grocery store, only to find it spoiled, you’d expect to be able to gain a refund, right? How about if you ordered a product and it was damaged in shipping or wasn’t the right size or right color?
There’s more to selling products and services than just grabbing the customer’s money and shoving them out the door. Customer service is the ability to provide a service or product in the way it has been promised.
When consumers are paying for a product, they expect to get what they pay for, not to incur losses as a result of the product or to receive an inferior product or service. And certainly, they expect to receive a courteous response and handling of the matter if there is a problem.
When a customer is paying $3.85 a gallon for clear, clean white K-1 kerosene for heating purposes, one expects that the product will be pure and won’t foul out the heaters or furnaces in which it’s being used. One certainly has a reasonable expectation that the fuel won’t contain water, especially when the cost is $3.85 per gallon.
In many parts of the country, particularly in the Adirondacks, consumers rely on portable kerosene heaters as an auxiliary and sometimes primary heat source. Sportsmen use them in their ice shanties and homeowners use them as a heat source in their basements, workshops and garages. Heater manufacturers recommend using white K-1 kerosene for maximum efficiency and of course, the clear white kerosene costs more than the red dye kerosene.
Kerosene products have been around for over a century and are safe to use with only the usual precautions required for anything that generates heat. Personally, we have used kerosene heaters for over 20 years.
In 1988, under an edict of then President Clinton, a red dye was added to kerosene that was being used for home heating as that is not subject to federal highway excise tax. Truckers who add kerosene to diesel fuel must pay excise tax. The red dye kerosene is usually delivered in bulk quantities by a fuel oil dealer. Clear K-1 kerosene is often very difficult to find and of course, it costs more, sometimes as much as a $1 per gallon more.
When maintained properly, with clean white kerosene and burned out regularly to remove any carbon deposits, portable heaters will last a season or more without changing a wick. When there’s water in the kerosene, the heater will quickly become “fouled out” and unusable. When you can literally watch the flame go down, down, down in the course of several days and the heater begins to emit foul odors, it’s not the fault of the heater but rather the kerosene.
Water contaminates kerosene, saturating the cotton portion of heater wicks and then the stoves do not work correctly. Sometimes, careless fuel oil dealers will contaminate the product by not using a clean hose, pumping the white kerosene with a hose which is contaminated with fuel oil or diesel fuel.
Last spring, after red dye kerosene began fouling out this writer’s heaters and diesel fuel was found in the kerosene, a new heater was purchased and switch was made to use only “white” kerosene which meant a change to a fuel dealer which sells the clear, supposedly clean kero, Buckman Family Fuels of Chestertown. Within a week or two, the new heaters became fouled out too. Two more new heaters were purchased with the same result and it became a real battle to stay warm, and very expensive. Spring was welcome.
Over the summer, three of the heaters were taken to a repairman for refurbishing and under normal conditions, with clean kerosene and routine maintenance, the heaters should have lasted for the entire winter, producing an even, odor free heat.
Within two weeks use this fall, using supposedly the best, purest kerosene there is and certainly at a premium price, the first heater died. Then the second and over Thanksgiving weekend, this writer was left without heat due to fouled out heaters. When the repairman returned the heater $50 later after replacing the wick, the verdict was “there’s water in the kerosene” that isn’t allowing the kerosene up the wick and is fouling out the heaters”. The tank had been drained, cleaned with dry gas and kerosene thrown away.
We were fortunate to be able to buy a brand new Kerosun on Ebay and should have been set for the winter with one new heater and one totally refurbished one. Wrong.
We notified the fuel oil dealer, thinking that he would want to know that there was water in his product and would want to take steps to rectify the problem. We also brought to his attention the losses we had incurred due to his contaminated product and we had the repairman to support our statements as well as samples of the contaminated kerosene. The next closest place to purchase white kerosene is 15 miles away.
Considering that his impure product had cost us three heaters, at least six wicks and the cost of having the wicks changed, not only did we expect assurances that steps would be taken by the dealer to remove the contaminating water from his product, but that an adjustment or refund would be made for the damages caused. Minimally, we expected an apology.
Ten days went by and there was no response, no acknowledgement from Buckman Family Fuels of Chestertown. We began adding alcohol to the kerosene and ordered a special filter to remove the water from the product for which we are still paying $3.85 a gallon. One shouldn’t have to do that.
We began talking to other people who used kerosene heaters and were purchasing their kerosene from Buckman’s. All were experiencing the same problem. Their heaters would work for a week or so with the flame slowly dying to the point where they would have to replace the wick. Others reported problems with their furnaces in which they were using kerosene from Buckman’s.
Unbelievably, when we did finally get an response to informing Bucknan’s that they have water in their product, the response was that “wick type kerosene heaters may not be compatible with the fuel I sell”.
Unreal. So if you get water in the gasoline when you fuel up your automobile, it’s likely that your car may not be compatible with the gasoline”. Yeh, my car doesn’t run on water nor do my heaters and I doubt that other people’s do either.
The nozzle to the K-1 kerosene pump leaked so badly that one had to stand back when pumping the kerosene in order to avoid getting kerosene on one’s clothing. As the kerosene pumped into the can, there was a steady leak from the nozzle, running onto the ground, causing an environmental situation as well as the customer paying for $3.85 a gallon for the leaking kerosene. Then there was the issue of the pump registering and charging you for 5.5 gallons of kero in a 5 gallon can. They didn’t want to address that one either.
After obtaining kerosene at Buckman’s on three more occasions and no one acknowledging the issue of the water contamination, a more formal complaint was filed which elicited a strong denial that anything was wrong with “his” product and stating in essence, if you don’t like it, go somewhere else to do your business. Some attitude for a businessman. The trouble is, he knows the clear K-1 kerosene is not readily available and in order to find another supplier, it would necessitate having to travel 30 to 40 miles.
“Customer Service is a phrase that is used to describe the process of taking care of our customers in a positive manner”
“Customer Service is any contact between a customer and a company, that causes a negative or positive perception by a customer”
“Customer service is a proactive attitude that can be summed up as: I care and I can do”. Apparently customer service is not within the repertoire of Buckman Family Fuels.On Dec. 5, a written response was received from Paul L. Buckman, but without apology, without adjustment or refund. It follows:
“The day I got your letter, I got nervous because we had not changed the filter in the pump for awhile. We immediately went out to change it and I found absolutely no water in the filter”. (The pump nozzle had continued to leak for over 10 days after the first notification was sent, so if the filter was changed as they claim, they didn’t bother to fix their faulty nozzle at that time)
“We can only get clear kerosene from one supplier and it is a very specialized product which I don’t even really want to sell. Frankly it is a pain in the neck for me to sell it. You speak of my price like I’m ripping you off but when I was at Home Depot I saw they charge over $5.00 a gallon for it.
“Wick type heaters are very touchy and they may not be compatible with the fuel I sell but I can assure you that I am doing nothing different than I have done for the last 7 years and there is nothing I can do to change it. I sell the same product to over 20 contractors and they have no once complained about a problem with it. I would not be offended if you went somewhere else to buy your kerosene. If my fuel is hurting your heaters, then you should stop using it and look into a more efficient way of heat, like a furnace”.
Some response, some solution. So much for customer service and satisfaction at Buckman Fuels. Kerosene heaters are extremely efficient when the product isn’t tainted like that sold by Buckman Fuels.
Furnaces don’t operate well with water in the product either, Mr. Buckman, and the house is equipped with a kerosene furnace as you should know as you have made bulk deliveries.
It’s not just my heaters and my home that has been and is being affected by the impure product of Buckman Family Fuels and while he may not have heard any complaints about the product directly from his “20 contractors”, there are plenty of complaints circulating in the community about his business and his attitudes. Perhaps he needs to pay more attention to his customers and become acquainted with the phrase, “customer satisfaction”.
We commonly hear the phrase, “You get what you pay for”. Not at Buckman Family Fuels.
Guess we probably won’t get any calendar for next year after this editorial. Oh well, we didn’t last year either, all we got were a pile of fouled out wicks and a bunch of canceled checks for watered kero.
Customers beware when dealing with Buckman Family Fuels. 12-08-07
EDITOR’S NOTE: After this commentary was written and after obtaining ”clean, K-1 kerosene” from Buckman’s on Friday, two heaters were fueled with the new product on Saturday night. The kerosene fouled out both heaters by 5 a.m. Sunday morning and left us without heat all day Sunday and most of Monday until a new heater could be located. The remaining product was filtered through a device manufactured to remove water from fuel—over a half cup of water was removed from the product which wasn’t “white” but rather cloudy with a reddish tint. As of 12-12-07, Buckman’s is still unwilling to make any restitution for the losses sustained under their product liability. Other individuals who have sustained such losses and believe they have obtained contaminated fuel from Buckman’s is asked to contact news@northcountrygazette.org
Category: Business, Consumers, Environment, Opinion, Warren County
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