Cylinder leak!

[Samanthaleigh]

I'm heading out for a weekend of camping and diving one of our local lakes. To save time, my boyfriend offered to pick up my tanks while I was at work yesterday. I called the shop and confirmed everything over the phone. He was able to pick them up and everything seemed all good. He transferred them from the work truck and strapped them into our car that afternoon.

Later yesterday evening we went to run an errand in the car and I noticed one of the tanks was leaking, a pretty decent leak. I tried opening and closing the valve to no avail, it sounded like it was stuck open inside. We pulled it out of the car, ran our errand, and came home - it was louder. This morning, it has since stopped and is clearly empty.

I've called the shop to book replacing before we live on our trip. The staff said that since it wasn't leaking at the shop (apparently all the tanks he rented me have been sitting on the shelf for a week full ), it must be our fault and is the result of being bumped/poorly handled in transit.

My boyfriend owns a brewery and is transporting tanks of CO2 on the regular - he knows how to safely transport gases.

It's a standard aluminum tank, fresh looking paint. When my boyfriend gets back, I'll check the hydro date, but I recall it had a fresh valve o-ring that wasn't pushed in all the way.

Could one of the internal O-rings or discs inside slowly deteriorated and resulted in the delayed leak? What else could have gone wrong? I'll replace the tank, if it could only have been our fault, but I feel like it's not an automatic "it happened off premises, it's not our fault" kind of situation?

Any thoughts?

 

[tilikum]

If it is a rental tank ask again for the shop to make it right. If they choose not to, expose the shop.

 

[Scott]

From up here in the bleachers; Fill it, wish the diver a great weekend and move on.
Who knows, maybe when they return the cylinders they'll purchase something else, or keep coming back.

 

[lowflyer]

...but I feel like it's not an automatic "it happened off premises, it's not our fault" kind of situation?
Any thoughts?

I think you are correct, and the shop is an *%^(^#* for not at least inspecting the cylinder before making such a statement.

 

[joe10540]

If the leak got progressively worse perhaps it WAS leaking at the shop and had gone unnoticed. If it were me and the renting shop wanted to be like that I'd return everything I rented asking for a refund of everything and take my business elsewhere. Perhaps that's not possible and you have to write off the tank and make the best of your trip and use this as a lesson learned about their business practices for the future. Let us know what the outcome is.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

That's just dumb customer service. What is the cost of a fill, even if it was your fault?

 

[Aviyes]

Sounds like a teenager running the shop. Good Customer Service Step 1: Fix the problem with rental gear for the customer. Step 2: There is no step 2, go back to Step 1.

 

[tilikum]

Sounds like a pimple faced knuckledragger was at the counter. Ask to speak to the owner.

 

[Pullnglide]

I never figured up the actual cost of filling a AL80 but it is such a minimal cost that they should take care of it. Short of it being a complete valve rebuild it never bothered me to change out a couple o-rings to make a customer happy and earn their return business. If someone rented a tank from me and had the problem your having I'd immediately give them another tank and inspect and repair the empty one before returning it to service. We are very strict on our inspections so luckily we never had any problems.

 

[northernone]

Sounds like poor customer service from here.. I'd too expect them to graciously make it right, try the owner?