Berkshire Bay Contractors is a Southwest Florida construction company that has been serving residential and commercial clients with full-service buildouts, installations, and renovations for over twenty years. Employee-owned and operated, they are dedicated to client satisfaction, responsible business practices, and quality work.
The Challenge
Edward Arasimowicz is the owner and CEO of Berkshire Bay Contractors. His team found themselves frustrated by the lack of customer service and modern functionality in their previous fuel card. Overly simplistic billing statements were making their job costing process a nightmare, and their employees were restricted to using a single gas station brand.
Every team member at Berkshire Bay takes pride in the relationships they’ve established with their clients, so when they found themselves locked out of their account and unable to get anyone to return his call, it was time to make a change.
Arasimowicz recalls the drastic action he needed to take to get the company’s attention: “We actually had to not pay our bill for two months and have them contact us in order to get some communication. After we got in and settled out the bill, we closed the account and then we transferred over to Coast, and the process has been night and day.”
The Solution
Switching to the Coast fuel card provided immediate relief for the Berkshire Bay team. Not only did they find the customer service “outstanding,” but the ability to log into the portal and see each employee card associated with a specific employee and vehicle was a game changer. “We’re really big on job costing and our divisions are set up within each of our two divisions – service and construction,” says Arasimowicz. “The portal allows us to job cost each division per vehicle, how much fuel usage each division accounts for, and then also to monitor for fraudulent charges on that. We can change employees or PINs if we have to.”
Switching providers made the team’s day-to-day operations, as well. “The other fuel card service limited us to one gas station brand. The beauty of Coast is we can go to any gas station. It’s a lot more convenient for our technicians to fill up wherever they are, whenever they need to, and that’s been a great, great advantage. They spend less time trying to find certain gas stations.”
Fuel Savings and Simple Onboarding are an Added Bonus
Beyond the benefit of filling up whenever and wherever is most convenient or inexpensive, the Coast fuel card has allowed Berkshire Bay to realize additional savings through its unique rebate program. “I know from our reports, from an accounting standpoint, we are saving money on our fuel costs on a monthly basis.”
From the simple onboarding process that allows his company to categorize its fuel by division and subdivision to the elimination of having to reconcile his work cards, Arasimowicz loves the new streamlined accounting process and job costing capabilities.
Beyond that, he can’t say enough good things about Coast’s customer service. “One great thing that we’ve found with Coast is that we always get a person on the phone. It’s been a pet peeve of ours forever when we can’t get someone on the phone to solve a problem. At Coast, there’s always someone on the phone. They’ve resolved every problem that we’ve had and they’ve been very, very helpful with progressing us to each level as we try to grow our business.”
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