Boston home heating oil company making advance calls to customers to avoid sticker shock
New England homeowners may need to brace for winter regardless of its severity this year. Snow, sleet, or shine, the cost to heat homes may be more chilling than the air outside.
Metro Energy in South Boston is already fielding nervous calls from customers, and they typically don't see a rush until the end of September. They don't want their customers to get sticker shock, so they have been making advance calls to their clients.
On Sept. 9, it was going to cost their customers $5.89 a gallon. The company has been around for 100 years, but rarely have they seen prices this high.
"In my lifetime of working here, this is maybe the third time it's hit to this high point," said Metro Energy co-owner Debbie Markarian.
She says the market has been volatile for the last three years. Typically, they see the cost of oil go down in the spring and summer, but instead that's when they saw a spike following the start of the war with Iran. They have started encouraging some customers to fill half of a tank, hoping that when they need the next refill that the prices may have gone down.
"Maybe you should just do 100 gallons, and then let's see what happens, because that 100 gallons could probably sustain you three to four weeks, and that can all change," said Markarian. "You never know, sometimes it will just drop and then it will go back up the next day."
On the day WBZ-TV came by, they saw a 20-cent spike in the market but chose not to raise prices. They were hoping it would drop by the end of the day.
"We felt terrible. We were hoping our customers would be getting a little bit of a break," said Markarian. "Even electric and gas, their prices have increased significantly."
If this coming winter is as harsh as the last, it could be a costly few months for New Englanders.
"I don't know if I can do another one of those winters. I'm going to move to Florida. I'm just going to shut down," joked Markarian. "We cannot sustain these high prices, especially for the whole season. I'm hoping like a winning team, there is going to be winning and losing."
