What a Gas! Whose Gas ?

[Unkel Kunkel]

How/ where do you get your ( welding ) gas?

Used  BOC - for many years.

A demand from from BOC came with a with a thinly veiled threat regarding the cost of debt collection to just justify a  “Late payment  fee “ of £25.,

This was despite having a direct debit for years.

A further £5 plus fee for “paperless communication”made me consider  it may be  time to consider a change.

I promptly returned the cylinder and closed  the account .

Email says account closed… Nothing to pay.

Rang up.This isn’t easy as it sounds. Various  customer service options ,  gleaned from the website, bring you to option 3”’ .

This resulted  in the response, “This  option is no longer available”

Going for “option 2” -( OK, I know that's for new customers ,but at least it gets you over the barricade to speak to a human being.( As it turns out, a very calm,pleasant, reasonable  and most helpful one). He reassures me the account is  closed.

Account closed ; Nil to pay; Draw a line under it ; All done; ;finished;  ... Phew.

I now get an email this week saying ..I am entitled to a 10 months refund -  please send bank details.
 

Hobby Gas ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Clive]

I used hobby gas, until the local suppliers disappeared. Managed to return the bottle when empty to another supplier when passing, now use a local place that does rent free bottles. 

So I would check what is available locally. Sods law says whenever you need a refill it will be urgent.

[KevinR]

I'm using Hobbygas from my local supplier, Fowlmere Welding.  Got a bottle of pure Argon for the TIG and a CO2/Argon mix for the MIG.

[NonMember]

My current bottle is "AirLiquide", which seems to be the French equivalent of BOC but with a more laissez faire attitude. It's what my local supplier sells, with the bottle on a refund-when-returned basis.

[JohnD]

Ausgezeichnete Wahl, Menschen!

 

[steveo]

We did use BOC at work but switched to a local motor factor ( Mill autoquip ) as they did a much better price & delivered quick.

At home using disposable bottles ( £15 each and going up every time ) for my Cebora turbo 130, took 3 bottles to weld up the Herald !

Cheers, Steve.

[andybeau]

I use Hobbyweld, two suppliers near me so if ones out if stock the other usually has a bottle.

There smallest argon 5 was £48 when I last exchanged it last month. Can't remember what the deposit was. 

[ahebron]

Funny that.
Here in NZ we have BOC (formerly NZIG) and they had the market for many years.
They charged bottle owners a small fortunefor refills then deemed allprivately owned bottles dangerous and unable to be refilled forcing owners to rent from them.
Competition came in and amazingly the  competition said we were able to keep our bottles as long as they got tested every 10 years and they can fill them as well. I can get replacement oxy/acetylene, tig and mig 7 days a week from the local Bunnings.
It took BOC many years of customers walking away to realise what was going on and now they do bottle swap deal but I am not  going back.
I buy there welders and plasma cutter but not gas anymore.