Bantam Home & Energy Partners With Oil Heat Cares To Provide Customer With New Equipment

LITCHFIELD, Conn. - Feb. 5, 2014 - PRLog -- Early on the afternoon of December 24, Philip Moncuse, of Morris, CT received a phone call from Bantam Home & Energy informing him of an early and most welcomed Christmas gift.

The call came from Rick Smolkis, the company’s equipment sales manager, who said that Bantam Home & Energy had made an arrangement with Oil Heat Cares, the charitable arm of The National Association of Oil Energy Service Professionals, OESP, to provide the Moncuses with a new Lenox warm air oil furnace and Becket burner, plus a 275-gallon Roth double-walled oil tank.

Best of all, the equipment, delivery and installation, a package values at about $7,000, would be provided to the family free of charge.

“I think this was just about the greatest phone call I ever got in my life,” Moncuse said.  “I can’t remember the last time I felt that much relief.  We’re extremely grateful to all the people who made this possible.”

The new furnace and oil tank were installed in the Moncuse home in mid-January.

Oil Energy Cares is an East Petersburg, Penn.-based not-for-profit organization that helps people in need replace their oil-burning equipment free of charge by partnering with local fuel companies like Bantam Home & Energy.  The organization typically helps people who “fall through the cracks” – those who don’t have a low enough income to qualify for government assistance but still cannot afford to replace something like a full oil heating system on their own.

“These are good, hard-working people and long-standing oil heat customers who just ran into a bit of bad luck,” Dan Gentile, the president of OESP’s New Haven chapter, said of the Moncuses.  “These are exactly the type of people Oil Heat Cares was set up to help.”

Under its partnership with Bantam Home & Energy, Oil Heat Cares will reimburse the local oil company for the cost of the new equipment, while Bantam Home & Energy absorbs the delivery and installation costs.

Bantam Home & Energy President Peter Aziz said three of his workers completed the installation over the course of two days, a service bill that could have reached as high as $4,000 had the Moncuses been charged the full retail price.

Moncuse, his wife Lynn, and their two daughters, Jen and Kate, had been living without a working oil furnace since their old unit had been declared unsafe and beyond repair in early October.

Throughout the early fall and winter they had been trying to heat their home with three electric space heaters, an expensive and not very efficient way to keep warm during the coldest months of the year.

But, given the cost of purchasing a new oil heating unit, there really was no other alternative, Moncuse said.

“Space heaters are not very efficient and they really blow up your electric bill,” he said.  “But we didn’t have enough money lying around to buy a new unit and we couldn’t get a loan so we really had no other choice.”

The $7,000 cost to purchase and install new oil heating equipment was a major stumbling block for the family because Moncuse, a CAD, or computer-aided designer of electrical and mechanical circuit board parts, was laid off from a job he held for 27 years in 2004 and was unable to find a permanent position for the next five years.

“Even though I eventually found a permanent job, it’s been difficult getting our finances caught up,” he said.  “Working in temporary or part-time jobs for a five-year stretch can really do a number on your budget.”

Smolkis came up with the idea of contacting Oil Heat Cares while discussing the Moncuse situation with Aziz.

“They’ve been a good customer of ours for a long time,” Aziz said.  “We wanted to do something to help.  Rick remembered the Oil Heat Cares program so we thought we’d give them a try.”

“It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

Thanks to their friends at Bantam Home & Energy and Oil Heat Cares, Phil Moncuse and his family will ride out the rest of the winter in a safe, comfortable and warm environment.

Moncuse felt his oldest daughter, Jen, had perhaps the best take on the entire episode as expressed in a comment she made on the night of the new system’s installation.

Forgetting for a moment that the family had a new furnace, “she told me how nice it is to hear it turn on in the night and blow a gentle, warm breeze through her wind chimes,” he said.

Bantam Home & Energy, which was founded in 1930 and acquired by the Aziz family in 1979, serves about 5,000 customers in a 20-town region that includes most of Litchfield County and a portion of western New Haven County.

For more information go to bantamhome.com or call 860-567-9431.