Ferrellgas charges "final balance" twice, doesn't respond to letters or calls Liberty, Missouri nationwide

As a former employee with Ferrell, I can tell you, the company cares much more about making the stockholders happy, and care nothing about the customer.

If you lease the tank, you are legally bound to only have Ferrell's propane put in there, because the tank is FG's property. What they don't tell you is the price for a gallon of gas put into a rent tank is 1.00-1.50 a gallon higher than what they charge for a customer that owns thier own tank.

When talking to the customers, employees are not allowed to bring up one option with the customer to make them happy. There is an option with most service centers to purchase thier lease tank. Depending on the size of the tank, anywhere from $199-1000. That charge is the same charge they charged for someone buying a used tank to be delivered and installed. So you can get your used tank without paying labor, or for a regulator. The reason we are told we could not bring up that option is because the lease tank customer is the "cream of the crop" because ferrellgas would charge alot more for the gas and they can't have anyone else put the gas in.

I know numerous customers, after they bought thier tank, and saw the price difference in the gas (because we are only allowed to say the price difference is a few cents, to discourage a customer from that idea) the immediately drop ferrellgas and go with another company.

Another downfall with the company, is that if you are a commercial or ag customer, you will get preferred treatment. In the middle of winter, if a keep full residential customer and a keep full commercial customer 100 miles away call in out of gas, the commercial customer will get the gas first. Even if you have a newborn, sick, elderly, etc. And with the cost cutting they have been doing, if there is a "no overtime" rule in effect, you might not get gas that day, even as a keep full customer they are obligated to fill.

Ferrellgas tries expand thier business greatly, and ignores retention. Daily, there is a graph that shows the number of customers lost at every service center in the region, and the number of gains. Usually the numbers are about even. Ferrellgas spends 90% of thier effort druming up new business, while no effort to retain the business. My thought is if they put as much effort to retaining business as getting new business, there wouldn't be as many complaints on here about them!

They charge a "low use-no use" fee if you don't buy twice the capacity of the tank. An idea to make the stockholders happy. And I can tell you, I bet non-employee stockholders don't use ferrellgas.

They like to say that Ferrellgas employees are "employee owners" because of the employee stock ownership plan. The ESOP is NOT the ferrellgas stock that you get from a stock broker. It's another "holding company" stock. Employee stock has no rights common stock has. An "employee owner" has NO voting right for stockholder meetings.

The company doesn't know even how to spend it's own money. For an example, we have two delivery trucks with broken A/C's which requests to repair were denied. We were very low on spare parts, which parts could be ordered on an "as needed" basis, which made for emergency repairs (gas leaks) the only option shutting off the tank for a week waiting for parts. Requests for basic tools for the delivery trucks to do minor repairs on tanks were denied. Requests for new maps were denied. However, because the CEO was doing a service center visit, they remodeled the office (new paint, cabinets, carpet, executive office chairs for everyone, everyones computer monitor replaced with a flat panel, and a new lawn mower because the grass wouldn't get mowed "perfectly evenly" with the old one), shows the priorities of the management of ferrellgas.