Having quite a bit of difficulty receiving my royalty checks or even a response from Contango. Is this typical with Oil & Gas companies? The correspondences are very disheartening. I submitted my W9 to them in August of last year after ownership was transferred to my name due to the passing of my father. The Owner Relations Team overlooked my W9 (not surprised after my recent experiences with them) and because they did not submit my paperwork to the revenue department my paychecks have been put on hold for over 3 months now. I reached out to resolve this issue-- any phone calls I make are forwarded to a voicemail in which I never receive a call back. And response times on emails take anywhere from 7 to 15 days and usually any response I get is because I take the time to follow up? I asked if they could expedite my paperwork processing as this was a discrepancy on their end to which I received no response. I work for a nonprofit and am very much familiar with sorting through overwhelming numbers of emails, so I have all of the grace in the world for these types of issues. But there has been zero acknowledgment in regards to my frustration and an unwillingness to provide proof that my paperwork was submitted to the revenue department. I’ve tried to research other ways to contact someone within the company to try to resolve this issue but haven’t had any luck. I expressed to the Owners Relations Team in a kind way that I was starting to feel frustrated by the lack of response on top of the amount of time and effort I have had to exert in order to simply submit a W9 to which I was ignored. Any advice is welcomed as I’m new to managing mineral revenue. I don’t trust that my paperwork is being processed in an efficient and professional manner.
I have found it best to send copies of the paperwork by certified mail return receipt so that I have a green card receipt for when it was received. Then I have a firm date that they received it. I also send a demand letter for the statutory interest and the date of the first sending of the paperwork. That usually gets their attention.
Thank you for your response! I submitted my documents via email so I do have a documented time stamp of when they received my W9. Can you help provide clarity on how I would go about sending a demand letter for the statutory interest and the date of when I first sent paperwork? Is this something I’ll need to involve a lawyer for? My checks each month total between $500-$1000 and I am worried that I will not receive the full amount to which I’m owed with the way things have been going.
What state are your minerals in? My answer may differ slightly by the state.
Yea, Contango has no interest in being owner oriented. They make it very difficult to actually communicate with them. As you said, they don’t answer the phone, and more often than not they do not call back like their phone system says they will. Currently I’m emailing back and forth with Owner Relations. The person doesn’t even tell me their name. It’s like they avoid contact with the owners as much as possible. A little over a year ago Contango was messing up my direct deposit payments and statements. Showing they had paid me but no payment was received. After weeks of going round and round with their owner relations people, I finalled e-mailed their Vice President of Operations Michael Autin at [email protected] Someone called me back right away after that.
Thank you for providing the email! Glad it’s not just me. Hopefully I can get a response now.
Sorry, those questions are beyond my knowledge and experience.
Starting in Jan, I have email them, called them sent a certified letter and finally got an email response. They know that their 1099 is wrong and they will get back to me. That was over a month ago. I have a no deduction lease and they are taking deduction. I am ready to sent the email that says they know their 1099 is wrong to the IRS. Maybe they can get something done. I don’t know if they are running a small crew and can’t get the work done or what. Makes a person wonder if they aren’t just crooks.
Yes! I just came to this site to see if anybody else was having issues, and found this post. I have interest in several Contango units, and forwarded the paperwork for royalty I recently purchased. I received an immediate response to my email, but, was quite alarmed at their reply. I was making a demand for royalty on wells that have produced since 2014, and also the 12% statutory interest. They informed me that due to a “backlog” they would not be processing my request for up to 4 months. I did a quick check of county records and confirmed that other than the occasional final decree from a probate, or a conveyance very little has been filed of record for the past year, and, Contango has no new wells to set up, so, their claims of “backlog” is totally bogus. I dug a little deeper, found that Contango has increased their debt from 2 billion to 4 billion!! Contango is now a subsidiary of Crescent Energy who’s stock is at 50% of what it was a year ago, and they are selling a significant portion. This company is on the ropes. I’m preparing Oil & Gas Owner’s Liens to file by the end of the month.
Thank you for sharing! I finally got a response after emailing the CEO multiple times. He eventually forwarded me onto Jason Thomas: [email protected]. Jason responded immediately with Jennifer Trimble [[email protected]] and got me into pay status that same day (interesting because Owner Relations had told me that it typically takes 90 days for people to be put back into pay status despite the fact that this was an error on their part and they had all necessary information submitted to them on five different occasions-- Jason seemed confused as to why I was told this).
My pleasure! I am so glad you finally got paid! Yes, I know Jason, he’s great!
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