Suburban Propane

I’ve been previously pleased with the service, their pricing and courteous delivery drivers, but I needed to review them today because of the actions of one of their techs this morning. We had a normal propane delivery sent over to our house yesterday. Everything seemed fine, except that the kids couldn’t take a hot shower. I thought all of the gas was off to the house.
I called Suburban’s after-​hours tech support. This part of the experience would be a 3.5 out of 5. I had to insist and convince them the problem was in fact not with my hot water heater. My mistake for bringing it up. I have two of them that had the exact same problem of dying out, the propane stove didn’t work, and the gas fireplace wouldn’t stay lit. All of these things worked fine until I had a propane delivery that day, which could definitely explain it. I was politely sure that it wasn’t my water heater’s problem. She so badly wanted me to press the ‘reset’ button on my water heater (both instant-​on heaters that use propane in real-​time as needed, so they don’t work like the tank water heaters). However, she eventually forwarded my call on to a technician named Tony. He is where the story turns excellent.
Tony called. He spent no time worrying about the H20 heater. He asked me to turn on the stove. Eureka! It worked. I couldn’t figure out how, but problem solved! He explained that it may have had air in the lines following the fill. Makes sense. It must have pushed through the air. Great! Not really though. After hanging up I went back to turn on the gas fireplace, which started up great, but immediately fizzled out after the kids tried to turn the shower on again… Hmm… I call Tony back. He explains that he thinks it is the regulator. He’ll be out first thing in the morning to check on it and other stuff. Bear in mind the time is now 9pm and he’s going to call me at 6:30a. In the meantime, he thinks that I can probably get enough gas to run one thing at time. It turns out he’s right — I had a clothes dryer running (using heat generated by the propane). I had forgotten about it. Once the load of clothes was done the kids could again take a hot shower and the adults had a hot shower this morning! Brilliant.
Now the really good part — Tony calls as promised just after sunrise and he’s on his way. I needed to leave for work by 8am. He shows up at 7:10a or so, and immediately starts working. He pulls off the old regulator in less than 2 minutes and he pulls out a shard of some kind of debris (it looked metallic) that he says was in the «pigtail» (the pipe that connects from the tank to the regulator — I didn’t know what that was called either). That blockage is probably the issue, but he also says he’s doubtful that the regulator is in working order. Just to be sure that we are fully working he pulls it off, puts a new one on, and here’s the kicker — he did it gratis with a smile, a comment about how he doesn’t want customers to be cold this time of year and a «Merry Christmas». The gas now works flawlessly as of this morning. Suburban — promote Tony to «Head Repair Guy» or something. He’s definitely a pro at making customers happy.