Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Gas Prices

There's a new gas price chain letter going around with a magical way to lower gas prices. We've moved passed the "don't buy gas on this day" scheme, and are now onto this:
"For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the
other companies will have to follow suit. "

You gotta love crazy ideas that people come up with to move prices. This scheme at least might possibly hurt Exxon and Mobil, but why in the world would other companies lower their prices too, expecially if all the consumers who would have bought Exxon or Mobil are now buying from them? Just crazy. We could get lower prices at Exxon and Mobil (with a price wedge representing the non-E/M premium), which would be great news for any consumer who is not crazy enough to follow this plan and thus will still buy from E/M (like me).

I've got to wonder if the people who starts these emails are serious, or if they are just trying to see how many (crazy?) people will pass it along, thinking it might work.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dave, because I care about you, I'll buy from other gas companies so that you can get cheaper gas from Exxon & Mobil. I just need to get one more person and that should do it. Oh wait, in competitive markets, I don't have any effect on prices. Aargh!

4/19/2006 5:23 PM  
Blogger Tony Vallencourt said...

Plus, I think we're selling the car soon. So, maybe it will help me when I rent a car.

But I think this thing has got legs. If we could just get lots of people to boycott things we like, we can get lower prices for the stuff we buy! Get enough, and it would be like being a millionaire....

4/19/2006 8:10 PM  

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