Email

Print

But one industrial user, the owner of Belize Dry Cleaners, who does pay by his gauge and not their meter, said he couldn't stand by anymore and just silently watch while the everyday citizen got shafted by butane companies. So he's speaking up tonight and blowing a very big whistle. Here's his story:

Jules Vasquez Reporting
Lascelle Arnold - who is the largest volume purchaser of butane in the city with these two massive tanks, one a thousand pound, the other 500. He buys about fifteen thousand dollars worth of butane a month and 3 years ago, he figured something was wrong

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"Over the last 3 years we had a problem with the amount of money that we are paying for the gas. With the production we have I figured that some was wrong."

That something he says is the meter on the butane trucks that supply him.

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"I start to investigate for myself and I realized that there was a major problem. And the issue is that the meter that they have on the trucks give you one reading, and then all the bulk tanks have a meter on it that tells you the percentage of gas that is in the tank."

He's talking about these gauges on his two industrial tanks - which indicate the percentage of fuel he has stored.

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"So for instance if I have a 1,000 gallons tank and I have a 500 gallon tank, so if I have 50 percent in my tank and I put in 50% gas in a 1,000 gallon tank, I suppose to have 500 gallons and the truck supposed to read 500 gallons on their meter."

But it doesn't, it always reads more - much more.

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"The reading on the truck is 570 gallons just to give you an instance of gas. When we check the gauge on our tank, it registered 500 gallons, so for that 500 gallons that is registered on my tank, the company is charging me for 70 gallons more. In dollars - you are looking at over three hundred and forty odd dollars more they are billing me for that fill."

And he knows it's the meter on the truck and not his gauge on the tank because.

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"We had emptied out a thousand gallon tank completely, drained it and cleaned out the tank...whatever...and we get a full load to fill it up to 90% because you don't full the tank up to 100%. Either 90% - 95% for expansion or whatever. The truck actually gave us 1,025 gallons at 90%, so I say how the hell we could put 1,025 gallons into a thousand tank at 90%. At 90% we suppose to get 900 gallons not 1,025 gallons and that (difference) is equivalent - at today's price - of $550."

Jules Vasquez
"Which you would have had to pay extra for butane which you did not receive."

Arnold who fills up every week to fuel his long line of dryers and ironing machines - wouldn't stand for it and called on his suppliers:

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"I called them in my office and I sit with them and showed them that something is wrong here and immediately they agreed to charge me based on my meter and not on their meter."

Jules Vasquez
"You must have encountered some type of resistance, some type of argument. You must have had to bring in a lawyer for them to say 'well ok right is right, we are going with your gauge.'"

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"Within 2 minutes they agreed to use my measurement. Within two minutes. I deal with all the companies in Belize. So we went back one year that we were dealing with this company and when we tally up the difference that they charge us for one year it was over $18,000.00."

Jules Vasquez
"$18,000.00 you had over paid?"

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"$18,000.00 within one year. Based on that meter that was on that truck that was wrong. I said no, this will not go this way, so I called the company, I called the manager and I told him what was the issue and he bring his accountant with him, and I had my records and we sit down in the office along with my manager and my accountant, we sit down and we went through it month by month and show the disparity what we paid and what we received and the difference and we had a full spread sheet for one year. Jules I am not telling you any lie. With the next breath they agreed to pay back the $18,000.00."

Jules Vasquez
"Wait, I am not sure I understand. You didn't have to get attorneys involved, you didn't have to........"

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"Didn't have to get advice, I didn't have to be defiant or threaten or anything."

They even signed to it in this Memorandum of Understanding - at Arnold's request we have blocked out the name of the company - they agreed to a schedule to pay him back in gas

Jules Vasquez
"So they sign an agreement accepting that they had defrauded you to the tune of eighteen thousand plus dollars."

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"And over five thousand gallons of gas."

Jules Vasquez
"Although again that was meter and receipted."

Receipts like this - again - at his request we have concealed the name of the company - which have a printout showing that he has received 832.5 gallons and $4,162.00 dollars are meaningless to Belize dry cleaners - as the handwritten parts show, they paid $3,800 for 760 gallons.

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"Say for instance we get 832 gallons, actually that's what I suppose to pay for. When we did our percentage it was 760 gallons. So we write those information on that receipt."

Jules Vasquez
"But that's not even worth the paper it's printed on. It's just printed as a formality. For jokes, because you don't pay that and when you get your statement from them, that figure which is on the receipt is not reflected."

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"No."

If you're shaking your head, you should - for big buyers like Belize Dry Cleaners you should, the companies accept that their meters are just plain wrong and go with whatever the gauge says.

Jules Vasquez "You said over the years you dealt with all the companies and you have found a......"

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"Consistency with their meters [Jules Vasquez - all the meters are wrong, all the meters that we dealt with, so my policy at the Dry Cleaners is to make sure that we only pay by percentage that goes into our tank."

This is a record of just the past two months showing the disparity between what was metered by the Gas Company and what Dry Cleaners actually paid for. The left side of the paper show the gallons on the butane truck's meter, and the right side shows how much dry cleaners gauge reflects. They pay only for the percentage, and the total difference in just two months is equivalent to four thousand one hundred and ninety three dollars that the company was overcharged and simply did not pay, in agreement with the butane company.

Of course, we consumers don't have a gauge on our tanks we are just straight out defrauded. As we showed you yesterday a 50 pound tank from BWEL that we took to fill ourselves was 6.4 pounds short, while two hundred pound cylinders that were picked up at a home were also short. The one sent to Gas Tomza was an incredible 30 pounds short, and the one sent to BWEL was 12 pounds short.

Arnold who buys from all these companies said he had to speak out:

Jules Vasquez
"The whole game is rigged."

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"The whole game is rigged and the thing is that one of the things that amaze me is that if this is happening to me where we have all this accounting and everything in place. Could you imagine the household person who just send their tanks in a truck? The reason I am talking out like this is because this affects every single person in the country of Belize. The thing that really got to me for me to speak out is that whenever you hear butane going up and they squeeze the government to take off the taxes to raise the price to another $4 - $5 and in that same token they are stealing, they are stealing $40 from a 100 gallon tank. That is the part that really made me have to speak out because here is the government not getting the tax they are supposed to get because the government want to lower the price for the consumer so the only thing the government could do is take off as much tax as they could."

Jules Vasquez
"Which they have. It's down now to just the environmental tax."

Lascelle Arnold, Owner - Bze Dry Cleaners
"Which is 1%. But then these same people that is fighting the government to take out the tax so that they could give a cheaper price and they could get an increase in their price is still taking away from the same people that they are serving. You can't sleep because that is happening. "

Indeed, the revelations of the last few days have left all our heads shaking at widespread, unregulated fraud. But BWEL - which is the country's largest supplier - was shaking its head at 7news. Though they did not return our calls to grant an interview during working hours yesterday - and called after 5:00 when we still said yes, they could come over even so close to deadline - today they issued a press release and held a press conference to say their company name has been unfairly slandered.

Best part is the release - which makes all kinds of conspiratorial accusations - was not sent to Channel 7, and neither were we invited to their press conference.

Of course, we still got the release, and still attended the press conference, where Country Manager Leonel Reyes first read the two page release - here are excerpts:…

Leonel Reyes, Country Manager - BWEL
"In light of Channel 7 news clip aired on February 9th, 2011, Wednesday yesterday evening. It is very obvious to our company that members of the so called LPG Association have in full gear a defamation campaign against the integrity of our company. Firmly believing that the media has been manipulated by the desperation of our competitors to smear the good standing of our company, we in a clean corporate conscience address and point out the following; one; BWEL offers to one and all the exact amount of product ordered and paid by each of our customers countrywide. Three; we invite any independent entity to verify our operational standards, quantitatively or qualitatively at any of our depots countrywide to remove any misleading perceptions that may have been planted from deceptive media reporting aired last night Wednesday February 9th. Four; the news clip aired on Wednesday February 9th is another attempt by competitors to discredit BWEL in the eyes of our customers. Five; any investigating reporting would have given our company a chance to respond to the allegations in a timely and fair manner before serious slanderous allegations against another entity."

"Question? Why were only two out of several other LPG outlets sampled? Why not perform a complete and open investigation involving all parties before making allegations? What about the integrity of the scale that was used in the measurements? We would like to further state that given the pictures appearing on the news clip we have serious concerns about the direct involvement of one if not more of our competitors. Eight; we out rightly reject these irresponsible journalistic allegations made and challenge any independent authority to carry out verification that they may consider necessary."

And while Reyes would have wished for us to nicely call him and the Bureau of Standards, that would have denied us the element of surprise which was precisely the point of the story, that it was a spot inspection, and it was deliberately done in a clandestine manner to make sure it was a direct simulation of the consumer's experience. And we got just what the consumer gets, a few pounds and dollars less.

And while we have given the BWEL managers equal time to freely cast aspersions on our report - as they are expected to do - we completely stand by the absolute veracity of what we reported.

That veracity was confirmed today when the Bureau of Standards agreed to come and test the industrial scale that we used for our story which is at Belize Dry Cleaners. It was certified to be completely accurate; in fact it records an error of just one pound at weights in excess of 500 pounds; all the butane cylinders were under two hundred pounds, thus the error margin is zero. So, with that, any suggestion of inaccuracy can be set aside.

That certification of the scale, which just came this evening - kinda took some of the wind out of the BWEL assault when they opened the floor for questions. Here's some of that back and forth:…

Jules Vasquez
"How do you account for the discrepancy of 12 pounds on the hundred pound cylinder? It was twelve point something and 6.4 on the 50 pound cylinder. How is that discrepancy accounted for?"

Jose Mai, Regional Dorector
"I believe Jules; it is not up to BWEL to account for it. I was unaware that the Bureau of Standards came in today. I don't know if Leonel knew but if they did an independent verification which is what we are stating here in our release and we are inviting the Bureau or anybody else."

Jules Vasquez
"They did a verification of the scale yes."

Jose Mai, Regional Dorector
"Yes correct. We would still have preferred if the Bureau had contacted us and then we accompany them to witness the measurement because in the news clip that was published on Channel 7, that is where we have a concern with that we would have hoped that we would have been contacted and then we together would have gone and did the measurement and then there was no area or space for any differences or allegations or discrepancies on either side."

Jules Vasquez
"How does it make sense that the media Channel 7 would be manipulated or bought or whatever by your competitors when one of your competitors has a huge discrepancy, Tomza's discrepancy. Tomza's was 30 pounds off and so how does that fit in to your conspiracy theory that it's your competitors manipulating Channel 7?"

Jose Mai, Regional Dorector
"Because Jules I know that this came at a complete surprise to us."

Leonel Reyes, Country Manager - BWEL
"If I knew that your story was based on BWEL, I would have taken you right there and then to the plant and told you 'let's measure it right now in front of me' I didn't appreciate Jules to be quite honest the manner you approached with your video camera and so forth. I thought you were in Botes again. We don't have soldiers at our Sarstoon plant patrolling who goes in or who goes out. So you should have come to me, come to the office and told me 'Mr. Reyes, let's go right now there and then. I don't know what happened when you measured the tank from the plant and took it wherever you took it to measure it. You should have done everything, do a thorough investigation, brought Bureau of Standards and then I would have said, 'Fine, you are right Jules, perhaps we have a malfunctioning equipment at our plant or something' but you only targeted two companies and that's where I figure your news clip was a bit erroneous, fallacious."

Jules Vasquez
"You are criticizing my test because I didn't go through all these procedures and write you a letter and get Bureau of Standards. Who is checking you? At least somebody checks my thing - but that's a comment - my question is I paid $128.00 for your fuel to be delivered yesterday, I got only 88 pounds. Will you reimburse me the difference which is roughly $16.52?"

Leonel Reyes, Country Manager - BWEL
"Because of the manner that you carried out your investigation I cannot say I will reimburse you the difference of the balance. If you had involved us and an independent party to weigh the stiff together then i would have said Jules, listen I owe you so many pounds. But we weren't involved, you went in there like mission impossible with your camera and so forth."

The BWEL reps admitted that no independent body calibrates their meters. BWEL has invited us to do our tests again tomorrow in their presence, but while we agreed initially only as an act of goodwill - on reflection, we must decline, because we're sure that by the time we get there with the bosses, all will be properly in order. And, for the consumers' sake, we hope that it is.

We tried to get the Bureau of Standards to take a position - and the Director said he would after our scale was certified. He called for us this evening, but we were in that BWEL press conference.

As for the wild, baseless and slightly silly BWEL theory that 7news is somehow working on behalf of their enemies, the fact is we only did our story on Gas Tomza - who they counter intuitively list as an enemy - and BWEL because, again, those are the only two major importers operating in the city.

All versions and aspersions aside for the time being, we'll continue following up on this story….