Gas - a "Seinfeld" Moment

I felt - for a moment - this morning as if I was in the middle of a Seinfeld episode.

We have been having issues with our propane supplier. You know propane, not oil or "natural gas," but the colorless, odorless fuel (it's an additive that gives the gas that smell, and you're supposed to call "this number" if you smell it - it means you have a leak!). Our furnace, cooktop and clothes dryer all run on propane fuel. When we built our house, propane was MUCH cheaper than oil. We thought we were making a wise budgetary decision. Well, propane has increased in price, again and again over the past 10 years, so that it can cost more than a gallon of auto fuel. SURPRISE! Put that into your household budget, please.

The prices and the frequency of delivery have made me question our supplier's business plan. (You may recall that I chased the driver out of our yard last year, when he came to refill our 500 gallon tank, after a particularly LARGE bill had just been paid. I believe I yelled something like, "You need to leave - don't even unroll that hose! We don't need any more propane! You were just here! I can't afford to pay you $1,200 a month!" - something like that.)

I called customer service and requested a recap of our past two years' usage and billing. I got some flack from H**** in the H******** office. I asked for her supervisor, and was advised to call the main office. I called the main office. I was given excellent customer service by A***. And just recently, the General Manager phoned to ask me about the phone call with H****.

Now, to me, that is impressive. It takes guts to call a customer who you know is unhappy, and to ask just what she is unhappy about - to be willing to walk right into it with her. Mr. GM was willing, and today, we had that discussion. It was very enlightening, and I left the call feeling much better about his company. Our "gas relationship" is on solid footing, now (pun intended).

The "Seinfeld" part was when I decided to give him some customer feedback. I told him, in effect, "Look: you sell an invisible product. It's a colorless, odorless gas. It goes into our tank, and then - invisibly - into our appliances, and we use it. Then you show up to replace it, and charge us for it." I could just see Jerry Seinfeld doing a riff onstage about the purchase of an expensive, invisible, soundless, odorless product: "You have competitors. You need a face to go with your invisible product. You need a face for your gas."

It just struck me funny, at the time.