Price fixing at the pumps!

kluivert

:mad: We have all heard of price fixing between car dealers in this country. What I want to know is there price fixing at the pumps as well.

Driving home last night the average price of petrol is South Monaghan and Dundalk is 117.9 - 118.9. Why the quick rise in petrol when the price of oil shot up last week to $75 a barrel.

Surely petrol stations would have large stocks of petrol and diesel and therefore any changes in the price of a barrel of oil shouldnt effect the forecourts for at least one month and not within the week.

Three petrol stations on the Dublin Rd, Dundalk put their prices up from 114.9 to 117.9 within two days of oil hitting $75 a barrel.

So can someone confirm any reasoning for the rise.

There was an article in the Sunday Independent about the domino effect of rising oil prices, it said that its takes at least one month for a rise to filter through to the pumps, about three months to effect industry.

I was in Tramore the other weekend, where two petrol stations had petrol at 106.9 and back home here petrol was 112.9-113.9. Now there is a big variance between the two, so I dont want to hear the usual non sense of low GP%'s, true but still making a healthy operating profit.

I think I might jump on the band wagon and set up my own pumps.

drdre

yes you are right, but we are all complaining as we have cars.but really thats business.if you had a petrol station you would so the same.really think about it.

Banphrionsa

Overseas. In the States the same thing is happening. Price fixing.

kluivert

I am not talking about the price of petrol increasing, thats expected what my main point is the way in which the prices are increasing, that on the same day three petrol stations increase their prices to the same price.

While two petrol stations in Tramore had the same prices as well but significantly lower price.

I understand that if your next door neighbour is also a petrol station that it will be in both your interest to have the same price therefore eliminating competition.

I have noticed petrol stations who do not have direct next door neighbour competition generally have the lower prices.

I understand that everyone is business is out to make a living, but over inflating petrol prices has a big effect on inflation in this country, thus reducing the standard of living.

I heard a phrase once here on Boards.ie "when the sun shines make hay". This is certainly true with this country.

$Leon$

It takes 10 weeks for a barrell of oil to go from the well to the pump due to refining and shipping. it only takes about 10 hrs for the price to incresase but never really seems to decrease.

kluivert

Therefore it is fair to say that people are being ripped off!!

Is there a Recommend Retail price on petrol and diesel?

I am fed up of hearing petrol station owners complaining about the gross percentage to be made on petrol, however you never hear them complainign about the operating profit though.

Low cost supermarkets have a low gross porfit percentage however are amoung some of the most successful companies in the world ie Walmart.

Will people not start complaining at the pumps about the price or what can we do, is demand so much higher than supply that we are forced to take what we are given.

_Kaiser_

I've noticed that most garages in an area will have the same (inflated) prices.
Blanch is one of the worst for this that I've seen... which is why I get my petrol in Tesco Finglas

Side note tho: The Shell garage on Collins Avenue seems to base its prices on that nearby Tesco, but they are the only ones in the area that seem to do this.

Sparky

Ive noticed the esso in kimmage, one day as I was driving up the road the Diesel price on the sign at the time changed from 108.9 to 110.2 then the same day I was heading back and the price was 112.0
Its like they were updating the price by the hour.

We were worried about the diesel prices going up since last november so we got this company called direct fuels (http://www.directfuels.com/) last november when the diesel and petrol prices were below 90c
So currectly for a ltr of diesel we pay 87c.

_Kaiser_

Sparky-s wrote:

Ive noticed the esso in kimmage, one day as I was driving up the road the Diesel price on the sign at the time changed from 108.9 to 110.2 then the same day I was heading back and the price was 112.0
Its like they were updating the price by the hour.

We were worried about the diesel prices going up since last november so we got this company called direct fuels (http://www.directfuels.com/) last november when the diesel and petrol prices were below 90c
So currectly for a ltr of diesel we pay 87c.

That's commerical only is it?

Seth Brundle

On another kind of petrol scam, many of the franchised forecourts are getting their petrol at a wholesale rate that is more expensive than what the company owned forecourts sell retail!
Seemingly the Texaco in Drumcondra who was on the news last week selling for >130c/L of ul is only making 6c markup, i.e. texaco are selling to him at about 124c. I bought in tesco maynooth for 108.9 the following day! How can he do business when he is charged prices like that?

Sizzler

Fair play Kluivert, I also raised the same query on the consumer issues forum last week. Its complete bollix to put the price up on the forecourt just cos the price of a barrell has gone up...unless theres a pipe coming from (insert random oil producing country) to Ireland...which there isnt ha ha! Another theory is that the owners are just a shower of piss takers! The ONLY time petrol rises should hit the pump immediately is when Brian Cowen adds on a few cents at midnight post budget deliverance!

Think about it , I buy a fill up of 25000 gallons for my station at 80cents a litre on March 15th, this 25000 gallons was prob bought in at early Feb prices for crude, so its simply pure opportunism on the part of the station owner.

Its also complete bollix to say that the margins are crap for the owners, I can tell you thats not the case!! I know business that fill their fleet of trucks/cars cos they buy in fuel at wholesale prices...so if they can do it on a smaller volume you can be sure as **** the average station owner aint doing too badly !!

Sizzler

kbannon wrote:

On another kind of petrol scam, many of the franchised forecourts are getting their petrol at a wholesale rate that is more expensive than what the company owned forecourts sell retail!
Seemingly the Texaco in Drumcondra who was on the news last week selling for >130c/L of ul is only making 6c markup, i.e. texaco are selling to him at about 124c. I bought in tesco maynooth for 108.9 the following day! How can he do business when he is charged prices like that?

Another excellent point. More bollix from the owner of that texaco garage owner...he was on the radio a few mths ago and blamed texaco as they were charging him high prices so he had to make a mark up ! Load of ****e ! How can a texaco garage not less than 2 miles away charge 10c less per litre...? Either hes telling porkies or hes ****e at procurement negotiations !!!

bazz26

Another thing to remember is that our government take about 70c - 80c (I think) out of every litre of petrol sold in tax.

Incidently the amount of filling stations that have closed around my neck of the woods in the last 12 months is unreal.

While not trying to defend these places I think most small independant filling stations also heavily rely on their shop for revenue more than on fuel sales.

It is true though that there is some sort of price fixing going on imo. Prices of fuel is usually the same in or around the same area and as soon as you hear in the news that it is expected to rise, low and behold the next day it does.

kluivert

Bazz

Closure maybe down to bad management.

Id love you to go to my hometown to the Statoil station on the Dundalk road. The owners have a new VW Toureg, a 03 M3 and a new BMW 3 Series.

But know one complains, tried to have a conversation with the garage owner in Dundalk where i get my petrol and he says there is a recommended retail price from the distributors. But if they havent delievered petrol and Diesel how can they dictate the retail price - bare face lie.

drdre

kluivert wrote:

Bazz

Closure maybe down to bad management.

Id love you to go to my hometown to the Statoil station on the Dundalk road. The owners have a new VW Toureg, a 03 M3 and a new BMW 3 Series.

But know one complains, tried to have a conversation with the garage owner in Dundalk where i get my petrol and he says there is a recommended retail price from the distributors. But if they havent delievered petrol and Diesel how can they dictate the retail price - bare face lie.

i would love to be a petrol owner as i would love those cars.:D

Idleater

Sizzler wrote:

Think about it , I buy a fill up of 25000 gallons for my station at 80cents a litre on March 15th, this 25000 gallons was prob bought in at early Feb prices for crude, so its simply pure opportunism on the part of the station owner.

Surely the flip side to this is the Station owner who buys 25000 gallons at today's high price and which gets delivered in 2 months time when Iran has given in and the market relaxes down to say $65 a barrell.

In this case, the Station owner would be selling all 25000 gallons at a loss.

Is it not Swings and Roundabouts and that the simplest way of evening out the price "country wide" or at least market wide is by charging on the value "today" rather than the value it was bought at?

I don't know if the analagy is quite the same, but if you buy a house now for €400k, and the supposed bubble does burst, will you get €450k for it or will you get what the market at that time decides the value is?

L.

prospect

kbannon wrote:

Seemingly the Texaco in Drumcondra who was on the news last week selling for >130c/L of ul is only making 6c markup, i.e. texaco are selling to him at about 124c. I bought in tesco maynooth for 108.9 the following day! How can he do business when he is charged prices like that?

I think he said 6c per litre profit...
So this would take into account his expenses, like lease, staff wages, insurance etc. etc. His actual bulk purchase price of the fuel is probably below €1.00 per litre,. but after he adds these expenses, and a mark-up he arrives at his selling price.
So it is reasonable to assume that Tesco in Maynooth has lower expenses, and therefore they can sell cheaper.

It is still all a bloody rip-off anyway...

drdre

now this is what you call real price fixing. http://www.carzone.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=search&maxrows=100&MakeID=40&xMakeID=40&ModelID=1198&xModelID=1198&Year=&xYear=&submit=Find+cars+%3E%3E

The petrol industry is comptiton and price fixing as everyone needs petrol for the cars so they can really charge what they want as nothing can be done about it.thanks business.

Mc-BigE

nereid wrote:

Surely the flip side to this is the Station owner who buys 25000 gallons at today's high price and which gets delivered in 2 months time when Iran has given in and the market relaxes down to say $65 a barrell.

In this case, the Station owner would be selling all 25000 gallons at a loss.

Is it not Swings and Roundabouts and that the simplest way of evening out the price "country wide" or at least market wide is by charging on the value "today" rather than the value it was bought at?

I don't know if the analagy is quite the same, but if you buy a house now for €400k, and the supposed bubble does burst, will you get €450k for it or will you get what the market at that time decides the value is?

L.

Now you've hit the real price fixing cartel in Ireland on the head, sell a house for 450K when it only cost 100ish K euros to build it!!!!

Anan1

Mc-BigE wrote:

Now you've hit the real price fixing cartel in Ireland on the head, sell a house for 450K when it only cost 100ish K euros to build it!!!!

And this cartel works how?

Mc-BigE

Anan1 wrote:

And this cartel works how?

the conversation would go something like this:

Estate Agent 1/Builder 1: "how much did you sell you houses for last week?"

Estate Agent 2/Builder 2: "I managed to get 450K out of some "sucker" oh i mean buyer , last week"

Estate Agent 1/Builder 1:" Nice one, ok i'll try to squeeze 460K out of some other sucker this week!"

Estate Agent 2/Builder 2:"nice one, talk to you next week"

would you consider that to be "supply & demand" or just ripping people off.

Anan1

Mc-BigE wrote:

the conversation would go something like this:

Estate Agent 1/Builder 1: "how much did you sell you houses for last week?"

Estate Agent 2/Builder 2: "I managed to get 450K out of some "sucker" oh i mean buyer , last week"

Estate Agent 1/Builder 1:" Nice one, ok i'll try to squeeze 460K out of some other sucker this week!"

Estate Agent 2/Builder 2:"nice one, talk to you next week"

would you consider that to be "supply & demand" or just ripping people off.

Eh, supply & demand, actually. The price is determined by the amount of money chasing the houses. If you honestly feel you're being "ripped off" then don't buy, rent.

Mc-BigE

Anan1 wrote:

Eh, supply & demand, actually. The price is determined by the amount of money chasing the houses. If you honestly feel you're being "ripped off" then don't buy, rent.

you could say the same for petrol prices,
If you honestly feel you're being "ripped off" then don't buy a car , get a bus or taxi! or Walk:)

Anan1

Mc-BigE wrote:

you could say the same for petrol prices,
If you honestly feel you're being "ripped off" then don't buy a car , get a bus or taxi! or Walk:)

Or by petrol from a cheaper retailer. If people only bought from the cheapest retailers then the more expensive ones would be forced to drop their prices.

Mc-BigE

Look at http://www.irishfuelprices.com/ very time before you fill up in your area and also go to the cheapest (but not 20 miles away!)

As were at it, buy all second cars from UK, boycott the irish motor industry for over charging us.

Dont vote are any party whose says there not going to reduce/get rid of VRT
which probably is all of them:( not great but its a start ,hit them were it hurts, ministers salary!

Sparky

Kaiser2000 wrote:

That's commerical only is it?

Im not sure, could be now, ive only used it for diesel in the vans


On another note, what the government tax on a ltr of Petrol or diesel, couldnt they afford to drop it a few %.

Anan1

Sparky-s wrote:

On another note, what the government tax on a ltr of Petrol or diesel, couldnt they afford to drop it a few %.

Sure they could, but then the money would have to come from somewhere else. Personally speaking, I'm happy with high levels of tax on fuel.

Victor

kluivert wrote:

Driving home last night the average price of petrol is South Monaghan and Dundalk is 117.9 - 118.9.

I was in Tramore the other weekend, where two petrol stations had petrol at 106.9 and back home here petrol was 112.9-113.9.

But what a northerners across the border from Dundalk being charged locally? I imagine stations in Dundalk can charge a premium over TRamore and still bring in a lot of business.

Sizzler

nereid wrote:

Surely the flip side to this is the Station owner who buys 25000 gallons at today's high price and which gets delivered in 2 months time when Iran has given in and the market relaxes down to say $65 a barrell.

In this case, the Station owner would be selling all 25000 gallons at a loss.

Is it not Swings and Roundabouts and that the simplest way of evening out the price "country wide" or at least market wide is by charging on the value "today" rather than the value it was bought at?

I don't know if the analagy is quite the same, but if you buy a house now for €400k, and the supposed bubble does burst, will you get €450k for it or will you get what the market at that time decides the value is?

L.

I see where you are coming from but thats the risk he takes I guess, just like buying any other volatile commodity. You can be sure that the prices dont filter down that quick, that was my point. It wouldnt be commercially acceptable to jump the prices at that level of the supply chain just cos some lad in Exxon is watching CNN and waiting to see what Iran does next!

The housing market isnt a fair comparison, as it would be recognised widely as an appreciating asset so even if the market does stagnate you will never be out of pocket.Has your parents lost out on their gaff? Doubt it

eorpach

Can sombody explain the following to me? -

I know that petrol derives from Oil, and I know that barrels of Oil are mostly traded in US Dollars. But then I also know that the US Dollar is now at its weakest point against our currency than anytime over the past 7 months (0.79 EURO buys 1 USD, or to put it another way 1 Irish PUNT would but 1.59 USD).

As this is the case, is there any plausable explanation as to why, when the Euro is buying more US Dollars now than it has for months, there is very little sign of the exchange rate having an downward impact on prices at the Irish pumps?!

Yes I realise that the Revenue tax petrol directly in Euro, but I also realise that they do it as a percentage of the wholesale value of petrol. So the tax component on petrol in Ireland doesn't full explain why the strong Euro is not bring us cheaper petrol, or at least petrol whose forecourt price is not increase on a daily basis!

Back in January 2002, when the Euro was launched, you needed 1.13 Euro to purchase 1 US Dollar (compare that to only needing 0.79 Euro to do the same today) - if there was such a massive discrepancy in the buying power of the Euro back then as compared to today, then how come people don't remember petrol spiralling out of control in 2002 also?

I would really like a credible answer to this question!!!

eorpach

kluivert

I started driving in that year and thought that the price on petrol was grand til December 02.

I think the price of petrol like everything else went up with the introduction of the Euro in 2002.

Is there any chance of organising a protest or something like no one in ireland enter a forecourt for two days. I only fill up once a week anyway so it wudnt make a difference but i think a two day stopage would seriously scare these boys

Anan1

kluivert wrote:

Is there any chance of organising a protest or something like no one in ireland enter a forecourt for two days. I only fill up once a week anyway so it wudnt make a difference but i think a two day stopage would seriously scare these boys

How exactly would a 2 day protest scare them?

drdre

kluivert wrote:

I started driving in that year and thought that the price on petrol was grand til December 02.

I think the price of petrol like everything else went up with the introduction of the Euro in 2002.

Is there any chance of organising a protest or something like no one in ireland enter a forecourt for two days. I only fill up once a week anyway so it wudnt make a difference but i think a two day stopage would seriously scare these boys

man you only fill up once a week.relax you or we cannot do anything to change the prices.but anyway keep trying.

Anan1

drdre wrote:

man you only fill up once a week.relax you or we cannot do anything to change the prices.but anyway keep trying.

We can all do something to reduce prices - only buy petrol in cheaper forecourts. Competition cannot work when consumers won't shop around.

drdre

Anan1 wrote:

We can all do something to reduce prices - only buy petrol in cheaper forecourts. Competition cannot work when consumers won't shop around.

yeah i do that. i buy from the same petrol station for the past while as its cheapest in the area.but think about it you really wonot save that much as by the time you drive around looking for a good price you will waste petrol.really

Anan1

drdre wrote:

yeah i do that. i buy from the same petrol station for the past while as its cheapest in the area.but think about it you really wonot save that much as by the time you drive around looking for a good price you will waste petrol.really

That's true, but there's a bigger picture too. Petrol stations charge higher prices because people won't shop around. If we all bought from the cheapest places then the more expensive ones would be forced to lower their prices or go out of business.

drdre

Anan1 wrote:

That's true, but there's a bigger picture too. Petrol stations charge higher prices because people won't shop around. If we all bought from the cheapest places then the more expensive ones would be forced to lower their prices or go out of business.

yes and no.not many people shop around as when they need petrol they wonot drive 5 miles down the road to save just say 10 euro.its most convience.so i donot think its possible but as i said its my own opinion.

Anan1

drdre wrote:

yes and no.not many people shop around as when they need petrol they wonot drive 5 miles down the road to save just say 10 euro.its most convience.so i donot think its possible but as i said its my own opinion.

That's what I just said. Read my post again, s-l-o-w-l-y.;)

drdre

Anan1 wrote:

That's what I just said. Read my post again, s-l-o-w-l-y.;)

I have read it S-L-O-W-L-Y

Victor

eorpach wrote:

I know that petrol derives from Oil, and I know that barrels of Oil are mostly traded in US Dollars. But then I also know that the US Dollar is now at its weakest point against our currency than anytime over the past 7 months (0.79 EURO buys 1 USD, or to put it another way 1 Irish PUNT would but 1.59 USD).

Why are you talking about punts?

Tell you what, go away and work out the cost of a litre of crude at say quarterly intervals over the last few years and compare that to the changes in the price of petrol.

prospect

drdre wrote:

yes and no.not many people shop around as when they need petrol they wonot drive 5 miles down the road to save just say 10 euro.its most convience.so i donot think its possible but as i said its my own opinion.

I always keep an eye on fuel prices as I am on the road, and when I see a place that is cheaper than the daily/weekly average, I pop in and fill up, even if I am only 1/4 empty.

kluivert

Am the same as prospect buy petrol in the cheapest place after all petrol is petrol no matter where you get it.