Getting quotes over the phone from local oil suppliers can be a pain, whereas with BJ at least you can see the price on the web site and can place your order there and then. Got to be convenient, surely?
The other day BJ undercut local suppliers by 3 pence per litre. When I told the locals they price-matched, but this just indicates to me that they are charging over the odds anyway.
What's the BJ/FF service like? Trustworthy?
MM
Hopefully, since the OFT ruling a month ago
Nick
I recommend joining a local Syndicate, if there is one, and if not, start one. We regularly get a significant discount on the quoted price, and even 3p per litre adds up considerably over a year. We represent three villages in East Anglia, and at the end of June, placed an order for 54,000 litres. I looked at Boiler Juice a year ago, and they were no better than any one else, if anything, higher; but that was then. I have also read some unfavourable reviews of them, but cannot confirm nor deny them from experience. Any responses to this with actual experience will be worth watching.
Thanks for that. GB Oils is the large distributor around here, but even its different companies can quote different prices. One advantage of the Syndicate approach is that the agreed price is fixed, even though delivery can be a week away. Our last order had one customer who was missed, but when the delivery was eventually made, and the spot price had risen considerably, it was the supplier who followed up to make sure that the correct agreed price was charged. It was not a GB Oils company.
I've normally found the BJ is about 2p/l more expensive than our local
*independant* supplier and that's without doing a pricematch. Note I have emphasied *independant" nearly all oil suppliers, no matter the trading name, are now part of GB Oils aka DCC Energy. GB Oils don't quite have monopoly, there are a few small true independants about, but it ain't far off. Of course all these group owned companies are free to set their own prices aren't they? Ho ho ho....It's worth a google on GB Oils, to see who they own:
"DCC Energy sells oil under a portfolio of brands including Bayford, Butler Fuels, Brogan, Carlton Fuels, CPL Petroleum, Gulf, Pace Fuelcare, Scottish Fuels, Shell and Texaco."
guide price or estimate. I've also always used a local truely independant supplier for quite a while now, probably before GB Oils really started to build their monopoly.
Read this and make up your own mind.
I think it's a real eye-opener than no one so far has actually confirmed they have bought via BoilerJuice! Let's see what the rest of the day elicits.
MM
Well, the day is coming to an end, Usenet-wise and no one has apparently purchased oil from BoilerJuice.
MM
I've never found their prices to be lower than my local fuel depot.
I've bought from both Boiler Juice and Fuelfighter and both have delivered = with in the dates stated when I ordered. In terms of price fuelfighter tend= to be cheaper in my area but then I dont think they have national coverage= where as Boilerjuice do. In terms of price my local supplier was about 3 = pence a litre more expensive when getting a quote today and after ringing h= im back said he would match it. Would rather they had given me thier best = price first time rather than feeling they were exploiting my loyalty. All = of my orders from either site have been delivered by reputable companies, F= uelfighter was WCF Fuels and Boilerjuice was Chandlers. Not had a problem a= nd will use which ever is cheapest in the future. Another site which was qu= ite interesting was cheapest oil.
Fuel Fighter
I've bought from both Boiler Juice and Fuelfighter and both have delivered = with in the dates stated when I ordered. In terms of price fuelfighter tend= to be cheaper in my area but then I dont think they have national coverage= where as Boilerjuice do. In terms of price my local supplier was about 3 = pence a litre more expensive when getting a quote today and after ringing h= im back said he would match it. Would rather they had given me thier best = price first time rather than feeling they were exploiting my loyalty. All = of my orders from either site have been delivered by reputable companies, F= uelfighter was WCF Fuels and Boilerjuice was Chandlers. Not had a problem a= nd will use which ever is cheapest in the future. Another site which was qu= ite interesting was cheapest oil. =20
I've only had dealings with BJ. They gave a lower quote than my usual supplier. I ordered a fill in November. They didn't fill the tank until mid January. At that time we had been out of oil for two weeks and I had to drive to a local supplier with four 25L cans in the car to get enough oil to keep the house warm.
BJ had contracted out to the worst supplier in the area - yes Total Butler I mean you. Never again.
James
That's actually funny.
Interesting. When I took over the local oil syndicate, there was a ban on Total Butler for a while, as they had done the dirty on somebody, I don't know the details. But I used them in the summer, they were the cheapest locally by a long way, and did the job. The syndicate usually gets about 3ppl below the lowest quoted individual price; we normally order about 40,000 to 50,000 litres, three times a year. Each time, it is a matter of calling round the suppliers, then calling back, quoting the lower price offered by another supplier, until it goes no lower. But I would be interested to hear what put you against them.
Did you read Steve's post? The bit where he said he ran out of oil due to Total Butler's two month delay in delivery?
As above, the three months it took them to deliver. After a week with no delivery I called them to be told we were "next on the list". this turned into daily calls, emails and nothing but a tirade of lies from TB about delivery dates.
Catching their driver pissing all over the tank, sight gauge and controls when they did deliver three months late didn't exactly endear them to me either.
If you look here:
It sounds as though they still have the same reputation as when they did whatever it was before I took the syndicate over. However, I have had the one deal with them, it went off with only one small glitch, which was promptly fixed without complaint or problem, and they were considerably cheaper than the supplier I used before. Based on this experience, and the fact that the whole purpose of the syndicate is to buy oil at as low a price as possible, I will still include them in the next round. I am not discounting others' unfortunate experiences, but saying that, so far, they have done the job, and unless and until they fail, I would be wrong to eliminate them. For what it's worth, I once looked up BoilerJuice, and their quoted price was one of the highest, so I don't know how their system works.
Indeed. B-) I hadn't spotted that.
Fuelfighter is run by WCF Fuels which I think is one of the very few remaining independant fuel suppliers. Almost everyone else has been bought out by GB Oils(*).
Boilerjuice was sold to GB Oils but after a "bit of fuss" was sold back to one of the original owners. Its now wholly owned by a holding company Welsummer Ltd which is wholly owned by a Mr Paul Ward. (At least according to the relevant web sites.)
I'm not sure how independant of GB Oils BJ really is now. Curious that Fuelfighter is a front end to Boilerjuice... both from the spam point of view and the link with a large independant, aka rival to GB Oils, oil supplier.
In my past experience BJ prices are normally around 2p/l *more* than our local supplier. Just got quotes from both FF and BJ. FF - 58.9p/l (by 9th delivery) BJ 60.95p/l by 8th Nov delivery). If I order from our local supplier they get very apologetic if delivery isn't within working 3 or 4 working days, which would be the 31st or 1st if I ordered tommorow.
(*) Owned by DCC Energy "In Britain, DCC Energy sells oil under a portfolio of brands including Bayford, Butler Fuels, Brogan, Carlton Fuels, CPL Petroleum, Gulf, Pace Fuelcare, Scottish Fuels, Shell and Texaco."
I purchased Oil from Boilerjuice.
For reasons I can't recall we had agreed to let a firm called Watsons manage a top-up arrangement. They were filling the tank whenever was convenient for them, letting it go nearly empty around xmas and really taking the piss price wise. When I queried the costs I was given some complete lies about how they had only accidentally charged me 65p/ltr when they had meant to charge me 56p. In addition to that, being old fashioned I always paid by the end of the following month by which time they were always threatening me with the County Court which had been funny to start with but wasn't any more.
So the arrangement was bad on all counts. A friend said try Boilerjuice and the one order was all good. They seemed to put the delivery effectively out to tender, got a good price & lead time, paying up front is fine by me if the oil arrives, so what's not to like? They didn't get me any extra discount by finding other orders to 'group' but in theory it should work like an automatic syndicate, only you don't need to organise it.
I never heard about the oft stuff until now but I had been considering organising my neighbours into a boilerjuice buying group and donating the extra discount to the village hall roof fund. Maybe I won't until I have checked up a bit more
Tim w
But is a year old now. Personally I've never thought of Boilerjuice as a comparison site, it's never given a list of suppliers and their prices. Just a price and more recently a range of prices depending on how quickly you want delivery.
At one time BJ would use the most convient, for them, GB Oils group company. No "tendering". They got pulled up for this and it resulted in the sale of BJ back to one of the original founders. I'm still not convinced how independant BJ is from GB Oils, though having WCF use them might be a good sign. However see my post from last night showing BJ and WCF (aka Fuelfighter) price quotes...
In theory... I treat that as a marketing hook, I don't like it. If I knew that people did get that discount or what the criteria were I'd be less sceptical. How many combined deliveries over what area would earn a significant discount (>1p/l)?
Maybe I'm rather too cynical about heating oil supply as most of our local suppliers (half a dozen or so) that used to compete against each other on price are now all GB Oils group companies and your call to many of them gets answered in a call center in Scotland or you get the same price (+/- a fraction of a penny).
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