Oil-buying groups save big bucks on heating oil

As homeowners worry over the cost of rising energy bills, several dozen families in Weston, Mass. will save hundreds of dollars on heating oil this winter.

Spearheaded by Weston resident Jan Fine, WBZ reports that he helped families come together to organize a buying group to secure a bulk discount.

The families buy such a large quantity of oil that companies bid on their contract. The wholesale nature of their purchase allows them to save hundreds off of the total price that individual households would pay.

"Last year we averaged about 50 cents per gallon savings over retail cost," Fine tells WBZ's Joe Shortsleeve. "So if you use a thousand gallons that saves you 500 bucks. Two thousand gallons -it saves you a thousand bucks. It's quite a bit of money."

Fine stresses that these groups are fairly easy to organize. To get started, he encouraged people to commit to their interest in the effort by entering their information in an online database, then he got in touch with oil companies.

“We are not an organization. We are simply a group of people who got together on the same database,” he says.

If you’re inspired by Fine’s grassroots effort to negotiate a better deal on heating oil, you can tap into the power of Consumer United's group discount here.