Skip to main content

Service Calls

What do you expect when you need service on your heating system?

It's the middle of the night in the middle of winter and you wake up to a freezing house, your first thought maybe "why isn't the heat on". So you check the thermostat, it reads that the temperature is much below what you set it at. Your next step is head downstairs and check the heating system. Come to find out it isn't running, what do you do?

First check a few things. Does your tank have oil it? When the temperature drops you may begin to burn more fuel than you anticipated and a run out may be the culprit. Many full service companies will be able to deliver an emergency amount of fuel to get you through the night until a more substantial amount of fuel can be delivered. Has your emergency on/off switch been flipped for some reason? This can usually be found heading down to your basement or around the heating system itself. You can also hit the burner reset button once and only once. If any of these don't fix the issue it may mean that you'll need to call your heating company for service.

Now back to original issue, nothing seems to be working or you are in fact out of oil and need to call in a service tech to fix your heating system.  Your first thought will probably be, I'll call the company I got my last delivery from. If you're a customer of a full service company than more than likely you'll have to wait an hour or so as you're probably aren't the only home experiencing issues. If you are a customer of pseudo-full service company, a company that has more than a few trucks but might not staff their own service department or may only have a few guys. You could be looking at several hours or days before you get any service done. If you shop around and use a COD company there is a very good chance that you won't get any service from them at all. 

Most COD companies don't have a service department at all, meaning that you'll have to call around to other companies that do have service departments.  I may be making it sound that if your buy from COD company X you could get service from full service or pseudo-full service X just with a simple call.  That isn't always going to be the case, as full service companies have their own customers who may be experiencing the same problems as you are, it is their obligation to their customers to service them first and in some cases exclusively.  Now that isn't to say you can't find a company to service your heating system, but on a cold winter night with the wind and brutal cold wouldn't it be nice to know you're with a company that can service you 24/7.

The difference on average between a COD company and a full service company's delivery maybe be $40-$60 per delivery. The difference between a service call with a full service company that can prevent frozen pipes could be in the thousands of dollars.  When you are looking for an oil company and skip right to the price of oil, you aren't taking everything in consideration and could pay more in the longer run.

Robert Stahelski

ckSmithSuperior Santoro Oil 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thermostat Tips and Tricks

It's time to lock down the thermostat In many homes now that the temperature has started to dip the thermostat might have become a point of issue. One person in the home wants the house warmer while someone else wants it colder to save on money. The thing that everyone can agree on is that heating your home while no one is there is a waste of energy and money. Programmable and smart thermostat allow you to set an away temperature. With programmable thermostat you have to manually go in to set the time for each day it's suppose to go to "away". Smart thermostats like the Nest learning thermostat learn over time based on a week or so of manual temperature changes. Other smart thermostats including the Nest will go into "away" mode based on a cellphone gps location. The upside of these is never having to manually change the thermostat. In some cases the thermostat will start the heat the home before someone gets home so it'll warm and comfortable bef

La Nina Summer

We Could Experience much Warmer Temps this Summer Last year and even the year before that we talked about El Nino and boy did it come, we saw one of the mildest winters this past winter. Now what, El Nino is the warming of the waters in the pacific, but what happens after the water has warmed? After the warm has warmed, it naturally cools off this is called La Nina. Traditionally La Nina follows El Nino's and present the opposite effects of El Nino. Of course La Nina don't always follow El Nino's, in the past we've seen El Nino's that extend into the next winter or La Nina's that extend for several years. For this year most weather outlets are predicting that we'll see a La Nina arrive around Fall or Winter. To understand what we might see this summer we have to look at last year. For 2015 we didn't see the real El Nino until mid fall and it continued through mid winter, but its effects were seen during the summer.  It brought us unseas

Heading into the Heating Season

Summer is Coming to a Quick End No matter what year after year, season after season, summer always goes by faster than any other season. Each season of course has there own strong points; fall has the leaves and cool nights, spring everything is coming back to life, winter has snow (if you like that stuff), and summer has the beach, pool parties, perfect outdoor weather. The Summer however is quickly coming to an end that means that soon you'll be heating your home again. We've touched on this subject before but there are plenty of factors to consider when picking an oil company if your new to oil. It's good to take a look at your oil company too, some of the things you should look at is price, service provided, services you'll need, and efficiency.  Many oil companies out there will try to rope people in with a low first delivery price and they jack the price up considerably. It is common for a company to offer a first delivery price, the key is to find out what