Monday, Oct 03, 2005 at 20:00
Spade,
Quite true that some people come in to get a bottle refilled or swap one when they have used very little gas out of the bottle. Hard to work out why they do this but some people think they can only
cook one BBQ each time.
On the other hand, more and more people have 2 bottles and either refill or swap when one is completely m/t.
The amount of gas returned in the bottles varies depending on the end user and yes, we do take the average amount of gas returned into account when calculating our prices. Just like we also take into account the fact that we get a whole lot of nice clean bottles back and then we get a whole heap of bottles back that need a fair bit of work done on them and then we get a whole heap back that we have to destroy because they are no good. All fair enough I suppose as some people see us a good place to change over a dodgy bottle.
And then we get the low life that knock off the bottles, break into the cages, graffiti the signs - you name it and everything costs $.
I think you'll find that with most refillers, the amount of LPG sold represents just a very small portion of their total sales and if they were to invest in a set of accurate, weights & measures compliant scales (and have them retested and certified at least every six months) and pay the additional labour costs etc then the price of refilling would most likely rise and then people would complain about that. Could be said here that those people who would like to have their bottles weighed wouldn't complain about non compliance scales - near enough will do. But then again we seem to getting more and more do-gooders out there who seem to think it's their responsibility to put a stop to anything.
From my perspective, there are 2 main groups of people - those time poor and those $ poor. Not being nasty here to anyone but lots of people don't have time to wait around getting a refill and others have heaps of time on their hands and prefer to save a few bucks on refills. Each to his own and either way is fine. The swap system is ideal for those who want to spend their time doing other things.
The best option for those concerned about not emptying the bottles may be to simply buy another one. The added benefit here is that they'll never run out of gas.
On another topic now, how come we don't get a standard trade in on our tyres? Surely when we buy a tyre we should be entitled to use the whole tread. When I get new ones, there's still tread on the old ones.
Hope this response helps - also relief to see that you're not just anti our business, Swap'n'Go, but all swap systems. We just seem to cop it beacuse everyone knows the whole system as swap and go.
Rocky
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