Amerigas Troubles All went down hill with the purchase of Level Propane Westlake Ohio

Amerigas was a company that focused on safety and good customer service. Amerigas is huge mostly by purchasing other companies and keeping a modest growth going. Companies have to adopt Amerigas's policies , safety practices and commitment to being better than the other gas suppliers and for the most part they have succeeded for many years.

But within the last few years things in this area has gone terrible wrong. A few years back Amerigas bought the failed and bankrupt company Level propane against the wishes of Amerigas employees as we were already taking Level propane's customers. To top that off someone high up in Amerigas thought Level's Technology was impressive and laid a plan out to adapt it to Amerigas business model. The merge of the two companies has been a mismatched blotched mess since the induction. The company technology is a horrid mess of mixing the old but fuctional Stars II system that Amerigas uses with Portal that Level developed. Stars II is very old yet does what we needed it to do. Portal is something developed for Level using their own programmers and it is buggy, half though out and missing key ingreidents needed to run a companys logistics effectively. Not to mention now in this area we have 2 system that talk poorly together.

The drivers now spend more time driving and less time moving gas. The company has also cut employees so we have less to do more. We now have a larger area to take care of as well. Managers now have little power to control key areas of the business that they are still accountable for. The frustration level is high. Employees are looking, quitting or waiting to see who is let go of next. Customers are leaving in droves and the only growth we have now is in the smaller accounts for the attractive first fill price. It is the lowest this company has sank to in it's history.

Customers are no longer able to talk to local offices which are soon going to be offices with no staff anyhow. Everything is redirected to the call center which is staffed with people who simply do not have the expertise or experiance to answer the questions customers have it the customer is lucky enough to get through in a timely matter.

If you want an idea of what is going on..stop in any Amerigas plant that is run under Westlake and take a look at the tank inventory in the yards..they are full.

Pete
Newbury, Ohio
U.S.A.