I was recently terminated from AmeriGas where I was a local manager. A customer told me about complaint while I still worked there. Reading it now as a former employee really stunned me because I was amazed to read that all over the country and over the course of the past few years, a lot of complaints were pretty much identical. What that really says is that the problems at AmeriGas are a function of senior management. The fact of the matter is that the districts never have resources to do their jobs. The district that I managed, for instance, was short-handed this past winter with 3 of 6 drivers out with various health issues. I was given no help by my manager. So when I read complaints from consumers about waiting for their deliveries, I know they are telling the truth - the old "do more with less" doesn't work. You do less with less. The basic business practices, from pricing to fees, are corporate decisions, not local ones. The local offices have no input on their budgets, so when they give you a budget of more gallons and more revenue, but less drivers, you have no recourse. The computer system is so outdated that they cannot support it any longer, and are planning to finally roll out a new system. Hopefully that will solve some of the problems that customers complain about. But the real core of their dysfunctional business practices come from the top of the organization. When the lock-in prices were way over the market after the price of oil dropped last year, we were not allowed to discount the lock-in price. The company wanted us to charge a "termination charge" for the customers that wanted out of the contract. So because the company purchased gas at the wrong time and paid top dollar, they expected customers and employees to subsidize their mistake.
From my personal point of view, it is somewhat of a relief to be out of there. (although being unemployed in a recession is pretty difficult)
When I left there in March of they were more than $25 million dollars over their bottom line budget.in this economy, that is extraordinary. That is the root of the problem - as screwed up as they appear to be to both customers and ex-employees, they make so much money they don't know what to do with themselves. I think their ridiculous gross profit will eventually shrink under market pressure - but as long as they can get away with it, they obviously will.
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