Gas station owner ordered to RAISE gas price

Really, Mr. Van Camp? You were planning on buying 3,333 gallons this year? At 15 gallons a tank, you'd be refilling your car every 2 out of 3 days to get that much.

Damned government price-fixing. Are we a communist country yet?

 

Wal-Mart does this with their gift cards but the thing is this. It isn't limited to a select group. The cards should have been for everyone in the state.
See its just like the bi-lingual stuff. You give extra for a luxury than charge less to use it. Boy! This gas stuff doesn't seem that bad until you compare prices just a decade ago. I know. It hit larger community supposedly before smaller ones but for top thinkers in feilds of vaction. There is holes upon holes of mismanaged misinformation.

 

Seems that the state's only interest is in making sure they get every cent of gas tax they can.

 

No - the law is designed to ironically protect small businesses from huge companies selling at a loss to undercut small business.

http://www.nfib.com/object/IO_20346.html

This guy's intentions were good, but if the law that he's breaking were to go away, he'd be promptly run out of business by the big gas stations.

 

What "big gas stations"? This guy was running a British Petroleum gas station.

Now, if you want to talk about Wal-Mart's efforts to pry open the gas-station market, you might have something.

 

I remember reading that my local grocery store (the HQ is in Wisconsin) has been charged under these Wisconsin rules several times. They supposedly sell gas at "predatory" prices compared to the mom & pop BP jobbers. What's strange is that this grocery store is always always more expensive than most of the other gas stations here.

 

it is a BP branded station, by the way.

the retail gas industry is one which many people don't understand (it is MUCH different than say, a McDonald's franchise), which is why people are so outraged at rises in prices. Exxon/BP/Chevron/etc. don't own the stations that bare their names, and they make a very small percentage of their money from retailing. having the names allows the local owners to have slight bargaining power over truly independent stations.

 

That's exactly what I meant. A few years ago Kroger and Meijer had a "gas war" near where I was living. We're talking utterly insane prices - less than half what other stations could offer. Of course, they were doing it primarily at one location, and primarily because they were both new stations directly across the street from each other. It got so out of control it required police to come and manage the traffic snarls.

Of course, after 9/11 a local station jacked their prices north of $5/gallon. They got in big trouble for that one.

Maybe. But it's not designed to maximize tax revenues for the state.

 

What does what type of gas he's selling have to do with it?

I'm honestly asking because I don't see where you're going with the "he was running a BP" statement.

 

I was trying to figure out who you meant to be his big competition? The ExxonMobils of the world aren't running their own gas stations - they're franchising them to the locals, just like BP did to this guy. So who's the big competition? (Other than potentially Wal-Mart)?

 

I'll preface this by saying that my uncle happens to own a BP station.

Yes, they do for the most part franchise them out. Sometimes there will be a few corporate owned stations (I know Sinclair owns a few of their own) but for the most part you're right, they are locally owned and operated.

Now, the big competition comes in when you have one guy (or company) that comes in and buys up as many gas stations as they can. So while they are "independant" and franchised out, its still often times a pretty massive company that can afford to take a loss on one station in order to run off the competition. It has happened to my uncle more than once. Luckily his business survived it.

 

Are you talking about the ones by Brandt Pike in Huber Heights?

I remember when that happened.

 

Yeah, I think that's where it was. Crazy.

 

Thats okay! Kentucky order to sue'um.
Stumbo sues Marathon Oil
ALEGES PRICE-GUAGING AFTER KATRINA

Just as expected. This is about over charging. Now we have some of those stations here in town, and occassionally; stores might wait an extra day or half a day. For change in prices but its always same majority of the time. anyhow it seems a bit confined and I wonder. If Marthon supplies all gas for kentuckians. If that is the case; its a good move. If some are being left out or failed to pay fines; it seems like. Attorney General does not know whats going on.

Maybe somebody could give a run around. However you ever go into pizza place. Their 2 liters of soda is at $2. I don't know the extent of the price-guaging law but will hop over to the state's site and see if I can read it...

 

I worked at a gas station when I was a kid. It was part of a block of 50 corporate owned gas stations in that area.

We did a survey of all the gas stations on our stretch of road 3 times a day. We updated our prices 3 times a day by averaging all of our competitors.

During some conversations with a regional manager, he explained to me that the real difference maker between competing gas stations is the convenience store. Things like whether or not you offer hot food, beer, a certain brand of cigarettes or soda, a clean bathroom etc ... People often couple their gas purchase with another activity like buying cigarettes or a lottery ticket. If you can offer that service to the customer better than a competitor, you have them hooked. Most gas buyers buy at the same place every day near their house or work usually once they're hooked, despite the small differences in prices.