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REPORT ABUSIVE REPLY
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Message Subject
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Tweets from around the U.S. " long lines at gas stations right now!" Panic buying! Fights!
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Poster Handle
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goldielucks |
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Post Content
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From SoCal...and yes, I DO REALLY LIVE HERE, ok?
I left town for a week. When I left, my tank was at half so I just parked it and thought, "I'll fill it up when I get back." At that point, the average price in the Torrance area was $4.21 for the mid grade stuff.
I got back yesterday. Filled up this morning where now, in my area, the average price for mid-grade is $4.85! It is 10 cents less if you use cash which I did.
The lady at the counter blamed the fire in North CA in Aug and some event at the Chevron refinery in Torrance from last week. She warned that shortages will be happening because everyone is going nuts from stories that there is a gas shortage.
Pace at the station was brisk at 8:00AM. No lines yet, no fights.
Quoting: Doomamatrix Yep. If a panic does happen, then the people will have brought a gas shortage upon themselves and, trust me, they WILL raise the price of gas even higher because everyone will be demanding it of them. Infinitely better to just buy as you normally would and wait it out. I think the key problem is that the gas stations just aren't willing to pay the current wholesale prices. They know the price will drop and they'll wind up having to sell the gas at a loss. Instead, they're just letting their supplies run out. The lucky stations are the ones that just got filled in the last week, before the price hike. This is one of those times that I'm wondering where the government is. At minimum, shouldn't the state government be doing something to get the wholesale prices under control? It seems the suppliers are engaging in a mild form of racketeering and some stations are just price gouging. (Not that gasoline sales aren't a racket every day...but this seems excessive) The gasoline that is affected, from every article I've read, has been wholesale, unbranded gas. That's not gasoline that is being sold at your local Chevron or 76. That's the stuff being sold by your local Costco or *insert random name* mom and pop. One article on the post said that these independent type of dealers would have to charge $4.90 to break even. Now, compare that to the prices being offered by the Chevron or 76 (average was about $4.60 last night). They wouldn't be able to sell it and if they did try to, I know what would happen. I've seen it before. When they did the same thing here years ago and bumped the price of gas up by 25 cents to specific types of buyers (independents and jobbers), well, they bought. The company owned stores and non-jobber dealers undercut them by 10 cents--because they could. So while the indies and jobbers were selling at the equivalent of that $4.90 price because of a 25 cent price hike just for them (with lots of love from the oil companies), the company stores were selling at a price equivalent of $4.80 (not actual prices but comparing what is going on in SoCal and what went on 10+ years ago). The company owned stores got to get another 15 cents a gallon pure profit doing this. Well, our senator tried to do something about it. Like I said, I've seen it all before. It'd just be nice if somebody actually listened after all of these years. Wyden has fought for years on the subject. We lost a $32 million business trying to survive it when they did it to us. I don't blame them for closing their doors instead. Right call, I say. Search Wyden FTC Redlining to find out more. It'll make you cry probably. FTC does nothing. They find no evidence of collusion when the companies are all so embroiled with each other that they aren't colluding really. They are pretty much nearly one and the same company. For starters: They also charged independent dealers higher wholesale prices than they charge branded stations. [ link to www.bendbugle.com] Sound familiar? Wow, Thanks for sharing that insight! Very deceptive and cunning or should I say...slick?!
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