General Discussion

We use to buy our propane from a local company. It sold to a larger company, that sold it to a foreign company that ended up in Switzerland.

So one day my spouse and I smelled a gas leak. We pay rent on our buried 330 gallon propane tank and they are supposed to keep it maintained.

So we call the local store and they say they don't handle our business anymore. And we had to call the fire department. We called the fire department and they said they had no equipment to locate a gas leak and to call the corporation.

So we searched for hours and found the corporation in Switzerland that owned and filled our tank. We called the CEO's office....it was dark and after 5 pm here, I think it was in the afternoon there in Switzerland.

After talking to several people, we finally found someone who spoke decent English and told them our problem. They said there was nothing they could do.

We said fine but if our house blows up we would hold them accountable and bring a law suit against the corporation.

Don't you know, 30 minutes later there was a man claiming to work for the propane corporation knocking at our door. He had equipment to hunt down a gas leak. (Turns out it wasn't a propane leak but a septic system problem.)

But if we had not been so determined, it could have led to some serious issues. The fact that a foreign company did not provide emergency services here where their customers are and just expected the customer to pay but not get support from them is typically the result of mergers, sell offs and foreign "investment".