I have got the e-mail that is going around, the idea being that if motorists boycott the two biggest oil companies then they will have no choice but to lower their prices, in the mean time there are no disruptive protests etc, we are all, supposed to buy from other suppliers.
Now this e-mail says that it should be BP & Esso that are boycotted (who its says are now one company which I was not aware of) but why BP & Esso, is there a conspiracy going on here?
Also the guys that run my local BP garage seem like nice people, they run a great local service by way of a Spar convenience store, I would not want to see their livelyhood jepordised by such action.
Futhermore there is a fatal flaw in the whole argument, if I ran a BP or Esso station and sales dried up for a few days, yet alone months, I would be on the phone to Shell, Texaco, etc to see who could offer me a favourable contract. The result being damage to BP and Esso as businesses with little effect on the street price of fuel.
Could be worth buying a few shares in Shell.
Regards.
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Sorry, but if I wanted to do this I'd stop buying petrol altogether. BP, Esso and all the other companies are businesses, and if their costs increase they pass that on to the customer. They're not in this game to lose money. That, and the fact that even if they gave petrol away free we'd still have to pay 75 pence per litre or somesuch amount to Gordon. It's not the oil companies pricing us off the road, it's the government.
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1.BP and Esso (Exxon) are not the same company!
2.If everyone boycotts BP/Esso then no queues for me.
3. Of course it's the tax that is the main cost. But if tax is reduced it will have to be made up from elsewhere. At least EVERYONE has to pay this tax.
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1) That's true. What's your point?
2) Again, true.
3) Yes. I understand that. And I'm not saying that there should be less tax on petrol. I'm illustrating that oil companies have very little say in what petrol costs. It's the cost of supply plus their markup plus tax. The markup per litre is negligible in comparison to the other two.
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www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=9928
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=22...7
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=t&t=30...4
Its not really an argument or a campaign, its just a windup which shows up every year or so. The above are just the three I rememebr before the current one.
Its just silliness really, nobody ever does anything about it.
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I do not advocate the boycott idea however a potentially more successful approach would be to boycott supermarket fuel sites instead of BP & Esso, the site owner (the supermarket) would not have the opportunity to change brands in the way than an independent franchisee can, even if, for instance, Tesco changed the branding on their fuel sites from Tesco to Shell, the consumer would clearly understand that it was still a Tesco owned site due to it?s proximity to the store and the supermarkets have a lot of influence over the major oil companies.
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Fuel retailing in UK barely breaks even for the oil majors. You can go look up the accounts if you like.
Whilst I was with Mobil they actually decided they'd had enough and sold pretty much all their sites to BP. This was before they got taken over by Exxon.
The garage operator makes pennies on fuel sales. He is expected to make the bulk of his money from the shop sales.
As stated nearly all the money goes to Gordon.
So you boycott Shell/BP do you expect them to sell to you at a loss to regain your business?
Call Gordon and put the blame where it lies.
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... its just a windup which shows up every year or so.
See also
www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/exxon.html
and
www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/gasout.htm
Only the places, prices, and names of the oil companies have changed from the original.
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Reckon Thommo sums it up nicely.
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Quite happy to boycott BP and Esso as i find my car runs much better on Shell.
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My two nearest petrol stations here in N.Ireland were Esso, which I used quite happily until recently, but now they've pulled the plug here and the stations are now a Texaco and a Maxol.
Shell also closed quite a few stations here a couple of years ago, so Maxol would now appear to be fast emerging as the no1 fuel retailer.
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Another factor is that petrol station owners have to pay for the fuel on delivery - no XX number of days' grace.
No payment or concession either for being tax collectors of very considerable sums of money and still having to pay tax on their own profits...:-(
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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My local Esso garage used to suffer from very occasional demonstrations protesting against greenhouse gasses/clubbing baby seals/destroying rainforests etc.
They also did not have many customers.
I see that they have closed down in the past week or so.
I wonder why they shut?
--
I wasna fu but just had plenty.
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