Terms

Oil Heat USA operates this site. The heating oil itself is sold and delivered by the licensed local dealer whose listing you choose. You see that dealer’s name as soon as your order is placed, and they are the company that comes to your house.

We pass your order to them and charge them a flat fee for it. Your payment goes to the dealer directly — it never passes through us. We do not set their prices and we take no share of what you pay for the oil.

We don’t take your money and we don’t ask for your card. Paying cash or by check? You pay the dealer at the door when they deliver. Paying by card? The dealer contacts you directly to take your card details and confirm the delivery before your order is routed. Nothing is charged when you place the order.

That means we never see, store or process your card details, and there is nothing for us to refund. If something goes wrong with a payment, it is between you and the dealer — though we’d still want to hear about it.

Somebody needs to be home when the truck comes, because that is when payment happens.

The dealer is responsible for the delivery and everything that happens during it. They own the truck, employ the driver, own the oil until it is in your tank, and hold the licenses and insurance that let them do this work. Your contract for the fuel is with them.

That includes what goes wrong: spills, overfills, damage to your driveway, tank, fill pipe, vent line or property, injury, late or missed deliveries, the quality of the oil, and anything a driver does or fails to do at your house. Those are matters between you and the dealer, and their insurance — not ours.

We are the software and the shop window. Oil Heat USA does not own oil, does not own trucks, does not employ drivers and does not deliver fuel. We show you prices dealers set themselves, pass your order to the one you picked, and charge that dealer a flat fee. We are not a party to the sale of the fuel.

We require every dealer on this site to be licensed and insured, and to indemnify us for claims arising from their deliveries. We check before they can list. What we cannot do is stand behind work we did not perform and were not present for.

None of this takes away rights you have under Pennsylvania or federal consumer law, and it is not meant to. If a delivery goes wrong we still want to hear about it: patterns are how a dealer loses their listing.

Some dealers will prime and restart your burner at no charge when you have run completely dry. It is a free service, offered by the dealer, and it comes with conditions that exist because of how a delivery day actually works.

Someone aged 18 or over must be home to let the driver in. Priming means going inside to your burner; it cannot be done from the driveway and cannot be authorized by a child.

You get a delivery day, not a time. Routes are built the night before and change with weather, traffic and what happens at earlier stops. Nobody can promise a window, and we will not pretend otherwise.

The driver cannot wait and cannot return later the same day. Other houses on the same run are also without heat.

If nobody is home, the oil is still delivered and your burner is not primed. There is no second free visit. Coming back out to prime it on its own, with no delivery attached, is $99, and it is not guaranteed for the same day — it depends on which dealers still have availability, which is why you book it on this site rather than waiting on the one who delivered. That price can be higher outside normal working hours, at weekends and on holidays. The priming itself, like the delivery, is the dealer’s work and their responsibility.

The same $99 applies if you have oil in the tank but air in the line and want the burner primed without a delivery.

What the driver actually does, and what he cannot do.

This is a basic service with a narrow scope, and it is not a technician visit and not a diagnostic: the driver opens the bleeder port and resets the system. That is the whole of it. He cannot remove, change or prime the oil filter, change a nozzle, clean or replace the tank strainer, adjust the burner, or carry out any diagnosis or repair — and he will not attempt any of it. He delivers fuel. He is not a heating technician, and is neither licensed nor equipped to be one on your system.

For the same reason, we do not guarantee that fuel will come through the bleeder at all. If the filter, the strainer or the line itself is blocked, bleeding it can produce nothing — and establishing why is diagnostic work, which this is not. Where that happens, what you need is a technician.

What counts as the job being done: fuel at the bleeder.

Priming means opening that bleeder port on the pump and letting the line run until fuel comes through instead of air. Once fuel comes through the bleeder, the service has been performed and is chargeable, whether or not the burner then runs. That is the test because it is an observable event rather than an opinion — the person doing the work can show you the fuel.

We do not guarantee, and nothing on this site should be read as implying, that your burner will run afterwards. Running a tank completely dry pulls sediment forward through the system, and it commonly takes the oil filter, the nozzle or the tank strainer with it. None of those are fixed by bleeding a line. If fuel reaches the bleeder and the unit still will not fire, that is a separate fault that was already there — not a failed priming.

If opening the bleeder and resetting the system does not get it running, you will need a technician. There is no further step the driver can take.

At that point what you need is a diagnostic visit from a technician, which is a different job at a different price. The person who delivers your oil is a fuel driver, not a heating technician. They are not licensed or equipped to diagnose or repair a burner, they will not attempt it, and they cannot stay on site troubleshooting — the attempt is a reasonable one, not an open-ended one.

Safe, clear access to the burner and the tank is your responsibility. If conditions are unsafe the service can be refused, and a visit that was booked on its own is still chargeable.

The price per gallon shown when you order is locked. If your tank turns out to hold less than you ordered, you pay that same rate for what went in — we do not move you into a more expensive gallon band because the delivery was small.

The one exception is a stop fee, which some dealers charge when a delivery comes in under 60 gallons. It is the dealer’s fee, the amount is shown before you order, and it never applies to automatic deliveries.

Drivers stop for good reasons — no vent whistle, a tank that isn’t safe to fill, a blocked fill pipe, water in the tank, or no way to reach it. You pay for whatever was delivered and nothing more, and if nothing was delivered you pay nothing.

You’ll see the reason on your receipt. If it points to something worth fixing, we may show you an option to have it looked at. That’s an offer on the page, not a phone call, and ignoring it costs you nothing.

We commit to a day, not a time window. Oil is delivered on a route and nobody in this business can honestly promise an hour.

Severe weather can move a date. Where a dealer has sold you a guaranteed same-day slot, weather is not an excuse — if they miss it you get a $50 credit, charged to them and not to you.

Fill caps and vent caps are sized parts, and we can’t take them back once they’ve shipped. Every listing tells you how to measure before you buy — please do, and if you’re unsure, ask us first.

Gauges and anything that arrives damaged or wrong through our error are returnable, and we pay the postage on those.

Only a customer with a completed, paid delivery can rate a dealer here, and we don’t remove ratings for being unflattering.

Ordering gets you messages about that order — confirmation, delivery status, and a note asking whether it arrived. You can stop those by replying STOP, though it makes it harder for us to sort out a problem. Anything promotional is separate and only goes to people who asked for it.