Got this email today...

r3nu4l

Well I got this email today, I'm sure many of you will get the same or similar soon enough...

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it

We are hitting £1.15.9 a litre (diesel £1.25.9) in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1.20 a ltr. (diesel £1.30.9) Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This 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 ANYpetrol 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 at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to a lot of 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 8days!!! 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, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso

Does anyone think this kind of action would really force companies such as BP/ESSO to lower prices?

Discuss

Not a hope. BP and Esso will drop their prices while the non boycotted stations will raise theirs. So the motorist still pays more.

craichoe

Actually ... i was just talking to an Energy trader 10 minutes ago about this.

Theres multiple factors for the price of oil, not just the demand, but exchange rates, hedging etc.

Oil will get to a stage where its too expensive for people to run a car, but the demand will never settle at a level whereby oil prices will come down.

masseyno9

But when Esso drop their prices they will regain customers - thus forcing competitors to lower prices to keep customers. Personally i think its a great idea in theory, but in practise I don't think it will work. If 30million people read it it doesn't mean 30million people will abide by it. And the same people will get it more than once inevitably, so its not actually 30million people. I think 5% uptake on the idea is extremely optimistic, with about 50% of the quoted 30million actually reading it. That means 750,000 people taking action against BP/Esso.

These figures are just plucked out of the air, and I haven't factored in the amount of people who dont't drive who will read it, so on the whole I don't think it'll work. Nice idea though!

Biro

"Brian Cowen said the 'F' word in the Dail yesterday... if you pass this e-mail around to all your friends, he'll never say it again.. however, if you don't, he'll say it twice tomorrow.".
They're called virus e-mails. Instead of writing a program to send the mail around, they just get the humans to do it! All these kind of mails go around and they are worthless.
Even the sob stories, like sign your name to make some little girl get a new kidney, it's all rubbish.

BlackWizard

UPDATE: Save yourself 1000's in petrol.

CLICK www.boards.ie/Mary/saveMONEY.EXE

r3nu4l

Biro wrote: »

They're called virus e-mails. Instead of writing a program to send the mail around, they just get the humans to do it! All these kind of mails go around and they are worthless.
Even the sob stories, like sign your name to make some little girl get a new kidney, it's all rubbish.

We all know it's viral, that's not the point.

I don't give a flying fcuk that it's a viral email, I'm asking does anyone think that this kind of activity will actually work? I certainly don't believe that it will for pretty much the same reasons as masseyno9 stated. There will simply not be enough people willing to travel to another garage instead of Esso/BP.

Look at how many people give out about the price of drink in pubs in Dublin, yet like trained monkeys they still hand over money at the bar every weekend :rolleyes:. The same principle applies to petrol. Some will make the change but not many.

Biro

What would work better is for everyone in the world to cover their number plates, wear a face mask, and not pay for their full tank of petrol at all!

L1011

This won't work. At all

First problem is we don't have BP in Ireland

Second thing is that the oil companies make bog-all on forecourt sales. About 8c/litre IIRC. That is *all* they can drop price wise. Most petrol stations are franchises anyway so you'd just be putting the local home heating oil delivery firm out of business, basically.

Third thing is that the price of oil is set on an open, speculative market NOT by the oil firms. The "Big Oil" that we get our petrol off control a pathetically small amouint of the worlds oil production - most of it is bought off Arab or South American government owned oil firms. The biggest of them - Esso - is only the 14th biggest oil producer!

Delete the mail, ignore all its contents and for the love of god don't foward it.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

r3nu4l wrote: »

We all know it's viral, that's not the point.

I don't give a flying **** (my edit for bad language)that it's a viral email, I'm asking does anyone think that this kind of activity will actually work?

Of course this wouldn't have any affect. To think so shows a complete lack of understanding of global oil trading. There are also more practical reasons why it won't work and they are connected to the fuel distribution network (not retailers) and the fact that there are many more suppilers than ESSO and BP. The local Maxol here increases it's price and the neighbouring Texaco follows suit, likewise when the Esso raised prices the Burmah matched it and vice versa. It's a childish futile idea and the Email is just designed to clog up the It systems of companies throughout the country with a huge cost to the companies involved.

(Love your command of English BTW)

L1011

You still have a local Burmah?

Thats *almost* as outdated as the Jet branding on the oil firm on the bypass in Longford - Burmah became Emo a long time ago.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

MYOB wrote: »

You still have a local Burmah?

Thats *almost* as outdated as the Jet branding on the oil firm on the bypass in Longford - Burmah became Emo a long time ago.

Oh yes. Still emblassoned across it. Could be any distributor but they only admit to Burmah. Some at the local port terminal maintain it all goes into the same tanks for further distribution regardless of retailer!:D

r3nu4l

MYOB wrote: »

Delete the mail, ignore all its contents and for the love of god don't foward it.

Jayzus, give me some credit!! There's not way in hell I was going to forward it to anyone. I was posting it to get the general view of people on boards.ie although in retrospect, most posters on the Motors forum would have a better idea about the make-up of fuel costs than the general public.

I would have thought however that the person who sent it to me (and about 12 others) would have known better. At least by posting it here, anyone who got a similar email and was thinking of forwarding it will hopefully think again upon reading this thread.

UK petrol stations only make between 2-3 p on every litre sold and as has been pointed out, the majority are franchises. Yes, closure of franchises hurts the distributor, but the distributor is not the biggest problem and it hurts the small franchise owner more than the distributor.

The biggest problem is our reliance on petrol and diesel and then the way OPEC manage production.

L1011

I'd well believe that, the different retailers do have their own additives added at the station tanks though. Enough of us here have bothered to do the litres/mileage calculation on similar driving with different brands of fuel, everyone seems unified in saying Tescos is pisswater....

As goes the station name I'd guess the franchisee isn't willing to splash the cash on rebadging it.

r3nu4l

Carolyn Big Sluggishness wrote: »

(Love your command of English BTW)

I write for a living (medical and scientific writing), therefore I reserve the right to be as lazy and incorrect in my usage of English as I want to be when I'm writing on a bullletin board

All day, every day, I have to be so precise, correct and accurate in my spelling, grammar and punctuation so I sometimes like to let loose on boards.ie

So there really is no need for your sarcastic, snotty comment in anyways, irregardless of wat u tink, no whar I mean like, bud? :pac:

L1011

Just noticed the inaccuracy where it claims ExxonMobil and British Petroleum are the same firm....