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Welding Gases and Tanks.....Protecting your assets....$$$$$$

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ekimneirbo

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2014
Messages
1,009
Location
Deep South
The local company that I have done business with for over 40 years sold out a couple of years ago. Shortly before then there was reportedly an explosion which damaged the facility which supplied Acetylene to them. I was told that they were importing acetylene from south america and it would be more expensive till the facility was repaired. Well one the facility was repaired, the high prices persisted. I continued to do business with them mostly because I liked the employees there. The company that took over during the buyout, ran the place for a few years and got rid of most of the people....but maintained the higher prices. A refill of my acetylene tank a few weeks ago cost me a $120. I called a couple of other places and was quoted about $70-$80 for the same size tank. My neighbor retired and came over and gave me his tanks which were purchased from the same place as mine. Since my Argon/Co2 tank was low I decided to take them all in and see if I could get them switched over to my name too.

Turns out that the company which owns the place has now sold out to yet another company based in France. Somewhere in all this transition mess, the friendly customer service became a thing of the past and the customer apparently is last on the priority list. I was told that the company had ordered all records and history of ownership and sales deleted from the computers. ( I was later told by a former employee/representative of another company that this was untrue and illegal....I don't know) At any rate the company told me that they had no records unless you had a transaction within the last two years, and the records they did have were incomplete. They would not provide me with any written documentation to prove I owned my tanks even though I had been doing business there for several decades. The long time employee allowed me to take a picture of his computer screen which ultimately proved to be sufficient to set up an account with another company. Since I had gone there to refill my Argon/Co2 tank, had already exchanged it, and had it loaded on the back of my truck, I proceeded to pay for that. Guess what, the price of that had taken a significant hike too. $106 now.

Another thing about this is that anyone who hasn't had a tank filled in two years, when they return to that company sometime in the future for a refill, there could be no record that they ever purchased their tanks there. Then in that companies eyes they have no proof of ownership and may not have any better chance of getting their tanks refilled than someone who bought at auction or craigs list.

My recommendation to everyone who owns a welding tank is to FIND your Bill of Sale. It has to be from that company, not one someone sold you privately. An auction Bill is useless.
If the original owner has his Bill of Sale and goes with you to the company, you should be fine. Other than that you are buying some of the worlds biggest paper weights.

One last thing, I was told that the new company was going to increase LEASING costs by 300%....from about 30 cents a day to 94 cents a day.

I spent most of the day getting my problem resolved. When I established the new account with a different company for future refills, I put my sons name along with mine on the new
account. I also made paper copies of the pictures I was allowed to take of the computer data and saved everything on my computer too.

One other note: The particular company I dealt with coded customer owned tanks with the letter C which allowed the new company to use my invoices (as shown on the monitor) as proof that I did own them.
 
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