Originally Posted by Crossfire Trail
My biggest beef with the locals is that when they get a whiff of prices rising, they change the price to reflect that. They have already paid the lower price for the fuel they have in the tanks. That's the main problem, it goes even further when they get a lower priced product, they still charge the higher price.
Who'se making the money then. There should be a cap on when they can charge the higher price and it should be watched carefully. Each state has it's own dept of weights and measures, let them be the watchdogs, give them some bite too. There are all kinds of laws being broken but nobody pays attention. That's just my take on the situation. Our Country also got all of the Oil companies in the middle east up and running with technology, then they threw us out. Why not take all our stuff and go home with it? Shut them down until they can figure out how to do it on thier own?
Make them pay, like they do to us. In Saudi Arabia, it only costs 6 cents a gal. We have done the same with Iraq, gotten thier oil fields up and running to the tune of billions of dollars. Let them pay for our help now that they can afford it. Simple economics, if you can afford it, pay!!!!
It's not quite that cut & dried though Crossfire. What's already in the tank doesn't really matter - if the station owner has paid more than the going price he's losing money everytime someone buys gas until it's refilled again. How your local station raises or lowers prices is a reflection of what the wholesaler (that being the guy who owns the tank farms & acts as the distributor) is charging & personally that where I think the gouging is taking place.
It was no different up here in the boonies: the day after Ike hit the coast our premium prices here in town went up $.40. There was/is no reason whatsoever for that to happen. There was no way of knowing, at the time, what the damage to the refineries was going to be, if any. Now if the prices were going up a week or 2 afterwards, that I'd understand.
BTW, the firm I work for owns 21 C-stores throughout central & N.E. Wisc. & I can guarantee you that we are NOT making money during this last pricing spree. Everytime the price of gas goes up our margins go down; in fact, we make money when the prices begin to drop because that's when we can keep our margins a wee bit higher. We'll be lucky to be making a half cent per gallon with this latest round of B.S.