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Proposed action to get fuel prices down in the UK

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  • Proposed action to get fuel prices down in the UK

    This may be a bit late, as I hear prices should start dropping shortly anyway, but I thought I'd still pass this on. No flames please, take heed if you wish, ignore if you don't.

    Subject: ACTION ON RISING PETROL PRICES

    We are hitting 95p a litre in some areas now; soon we will be faced with paying £1 a litre.

    The following suggestion makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy petrol on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

    BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read it and join in! Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

    Here's the idea:

    For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP. If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers.

    It's really simple to do!! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...

    Keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!! I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)...and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers!

    If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it.....THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

    Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (and not buy at ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.
    PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE. It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrison's, Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso.
    FT.

  • #2
    Guerilla marketing.

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    • #3
      isn't the bulk of the price of petrol in the UK government imposed fuel tax? Would make more sense to try and do something about that...

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      • #4
        I HATE chain letters and it wouldn't work, anyway. Who do you think supplies Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrison's, Jet etc.? Yeah, you've got it, BP and Exxon. So their sales won't drop. The only people who will get hurt are the small petrol station owners who work on an exclusive franchise. And if you think prices would drop 30 p, dream on...

        Plain stoopid and would clog the UK Internet unnecessarily, if the chain letter worked. Before being sucked into this scam, when was the last time you passed one on?
        Brian (the devil incarnate)

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        • #5
          Moreover, it does not take account of the fact that people who have send the e-mail may very well receive another in the second and later generations after having sent it.

          Buyers control the marketplace? The guy should take some (basic) class in economics.

          Finally, I am not at all convinced that gas is "expensive" or that expensive gas is actually a blessing.
          Join MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
          [...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - Veblen

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          • #6
            I paid 95p/l today
            The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

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            • #7
              For all the furore about Fossil Fuels Killing Baby Seals, I took the Green Hornet into my local Tesco's petrol station en-route to my mechanic, and the cheapest stuff on sale was the old Lead-Replacement Petrol (nee Four Star) at 88.9p a litre.
              So I put 20 in the tank that ought to be good for, oh, about 40 miles
              Athlon XP-64/3200, 1gb PC3200, 512mb Radeon X1950Pro AGP, Dell 2005fwp, Logitech G5, IBM model M.

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              • #8
                I usually yell at people that send chain letters.

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                • #9
                  I will consider myself yelled at
                  FT.

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                  • #10
                    Carpool, ride your bicycle, walk a few yards instead of driving them. It'll make life healthier and cheaper for you while consuming much less fuel at the same time. Don't send it to your friends, try it for yourself and if it works for you, your friends will notice.
                    "For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism."

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                    • #11
                      a) I've seen that one resurface several times over the last xx years

                      b) There are so may factual things wrong I won't even start...

                      Tony, you should know better

                      - the ex-oil executive
                      DM says: Crunch with Matrox Users@ClimatePrediction.net

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by GNEP
                        ...
                        - the ex-oil executive
                        Than...what do you propose instead?

                        You don't work for them any more after all

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                        • #13
                          Lobby the government. They are the only ones with the power to either (a) flex fuel taxes to offset fluctuating product prices or (b) cap fuel prices nationwide. (a) is possible but I doubt will happen (the chancellor cannot afford it, unless he introduces a "windfall" tax on the oil majors, but that would hurt BP relatively more than Shell or Total or ChevTex or Exxon (note BP and XON are NOT the same ) as Exxon is a US coy and Shell is tax-resident in the Netherlands) and (b) would only be a measure for crisis times, and would be akin to nationalising the petrol retailers (...again - it's happened before ) otherwise you'd suddenly find it in rather short supply (ref. Nigeria's experiences here).

                          The oil companies are in the lucky position of making v. large profits at the moment. However this is not due to them manipulating the markets in any way. In 2 places along the supply chain - at crude and at refined products - there are almost perfect commodity markets, of which the "big 5" have a surprisingly small share (in crude, nationals are massive, and in product, local players are relatively large in terms of market share). With a lack of refinery capacity (and not much more likely to come on stream soon, even if steel prices have now eased again), we are supply constrained, and the demand side is to be quite honest relatively inelastic (how many of you have honestly changed the volume you consume significantly in reaction to the rise in prices? Not many I'd imagine. Just grumbled more and got on with it).

                          So basically whilst the majors are having a nice time of it with the upstream and the downstream not playing the supposed natural hedge but doubling up instead, NONE of this is due to the actions of them (unless you count political lobbying) as they have almost no control over the largest variable drivers of their profits.
                          DM says: Crunch with Matrox Users@ClimatePrediction.net

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                          • #14
                            Prices here suddenly dropped. Down about 25 cents from a few days ago. Still not as low as they were a few weeks ago. There was a LONG line at the gas station.
                            P.S. You've been Spanked!

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                            • #15
                              That's because crude's dropped and most of the refineries knocked out by the hurricane are coming back on stream.
                              DM says: Crunch with Matrox Users@ClimatePrediction.net

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