What constitutes price gouging at the station level?
 

I have one station down the street that is $4.39 for regular, and another not much further which is getting $4.69. What could make their prices so much higher? Are they getting away with something, and where do I narc on their Arab ass?

they can charge whatever they want.

What is there to narc on? Go to the cheaper one.

what I dont get is oil futures go up today and the price goes up today. That oil is months and months away.

yeah, it really sucks.

When they start charging $10 a gallon then its time to get upset ! ( you dont have long to wait )

I do go to the cheaper one, that's for damn sure.

There is no mandated fix price cap. There is no natural disaster. Thus they are free to ass rape you. Oh by the way the ARCO by me is not Arab owned which is the cheapest, then the next station down which is Paki owned is about a penny higher. If you want ass raping you will visit either Chevron or Shell both of which are non Arab owned and typically rand 40-70 cents higher per gallon.

the price is set by the individual gas station, but they have to be within the levels allowed by the gas brand they sell.

I think the 'stations' are actually making less on gas now then they were in years past because they have to price themselves more competitively. People seem to pay more attention to who has what price these days where as before you would just go to whatever station was the closest without giving it too much thought. It also sucks for them because I think people are buying fewer other items (milk, bread, soda, etc.) when they fill up their tanks and that is where the stations make the bulk of their profits.

I heard that their profit margins are so low, that if a couple people drive off without paying, that whole day is fucked.

Before bush there was a mandated fixed price cap, but Bush and his boys signed a new bill doing away with that. Don't you guys remember that?

Today, Gas by my house was $4.25, By work $4.05, at Sam's Club $3.80.

The line for the pumps at Sam's Club was huge, the whole parking lot was taped off.
One entrace/exit only.

I am going to invest in rollor blades and a huge dog with a long lease to propel me around. No more gas for me suckers. :)


P.U.M.A

I am speaking of today.

Hell I have always known I am nothing more than a serf in a kingdom. Learned that early on in grade school.

There is an Arco station by me @ $4.19 and a Thrifty Gas @ $4.79 with people filling up at both. Why would Thrifty Gas lower there price if people keep paying it?

Stations make way less money when prices are high. Something like .10 to .20 per gallon. Most stations make the bulk of their profits off the mini mart portion of the station.

You are getting gouged but its not by the station owners. Thats why most of the big oil companies have sold off most of their stations and owners just pay to keep using the brand name.

But, even the "Amerika" brand gas station which gets it's gas from the local refinary or Port for us in South Florida cost the same as the name brand. It has more to do with the zip code then the brand.

http://www.miamigasprices.com/Amerik...ons/index.aspx

The most expensive gas in Miami seams to be located in Miami Lakes, while the cheapest is in Hialeah.
Chevron Miami Lakes (Richer Area) $4.37
U-Gas Hialeah (Less afluent) $3.75

I know that for some $0.25 a gallon equates to a $2.50 savings by going to the lowest price pump. Don't go into a bad area to save a buck, it's not worth the $2.50 or even $6.20 from the example above. Your life is worth more then $2.50.

Yeap that is right. I knew a gas station manager. He said most only make about $0.05 per gallon or less.

What pisses me off is how the price at the pump goes up within 12 hours of an increase per barrel - yet takes weeks to fall when oil prices go down (that's *IF* they even go down).

We're bracing for another 4-5 cent increase here in Niagara region shortly. We're now at $1.29/litre.

Back in high school I worked at a small store that sold gas. Some of the smaller mom and pop type stores have to pay more for their gas than the big chain stores do so they may charge more. But that doesn't mean there isn't gouging. I used to work in a city that was kind of in a bubble on the freeway. There was no town within about 5 miles of it either way and the stations knew it. Gas there was 20cents a gallon higher than anywhere else.

The real gouge is when they get greedy. For example there is a little independent store near my house, just outside of town that may go out of business because of this. They would raise their prices during peak times. So from 6am-9am they would price the gas at $4.15 per gallon. Then from 9am-3pm they dropped it to $4.01 then raised it back up from 4pm-7pm then dropped it back down for the night. They wanted to get the most out of the commuters. Someone got pissed and called the local paper who did a story on it. The story spread around town like wildfire and even the local news showed up to do a story and the city mayor made a statement about how he thought that was wrong. Their store looks like a ghost town now. They stopped doing it, but it may cost them their business.

why the fuck should they care about how high the prices are going? i mean everyone just sits back and takes it in the ass so fuck it. until heads start rolling over a tank of gas they'll keep driving it up higher and higher.

A friend and I were saying this the other day. I basically said: " If they raise it t $5.00 per gallon, we will buy it. If they raise it to $10 per gallon we will complain, then line up and buy it. we have no choice. Most of us have created lives for ourselves that are reliant upon having a car to take us places. Without the car, they have major troubles and the car needs gas so they will pay whatever it takes. Most of these people have also let themselves be convinced they need an SUV so now they are really feeling the pinch as they pay for a car with a huge motor and 4 wheel drive that has never even seen a dirt road or hauled anything more than groceries."

my way of thinking is, what is going to happen say when it hits 6 or 7 or 8 dollars... will you get robbed at gun point for your gas?

I really think if we reach around 8-9 dollars a gallon you will see this country spiral into a major recession. We have built our society around cars and need them to survive. If you commute 40 miles round trip to work (that is a pretty average number) and your car gets 18 miles to the gallon that is around 11 gallons a week. Right now you pay around $44 a week to go to work. When that number gets up to around $90-$100 per week people will freak out. The average household in the US makes around 45K per year before taxes. The average individual makes around 33K per year before taxes. Paying $100 per week in gas is going to hurt a lot of people badly. Most of the strength of our economy (last I heard around 80%) comes from consumer spending. When they have to fork over that much just to get to work they will stop buying other things.

And this is just the cost of getting to work. The other day on the news they said the cost of food is projected to rise 9% per year until 2012 because of fuel costs. This mean in 4 years food will cost around 32% more than it does today. The cost of just about everything is going up because of the cost of fuel. So you will pay more to go work and feed your family which means you will have less to spend and when people stop buying shit they don't knee the economy goes into recession. The hard part of coming out of a recession like that is that it will require the average person to actually make changes to their lives and that is not an easy thing to get people to do.

Absolutely, the cost of food will go up, cost of building materials will go up, and the price of pretty much anything that has to be transported to be sold will go up. People seem to overlook that when complaining about gas prices (or not complaining, like some of the self-proclaimed uber rich here).

Fact is no matter how well-off you are, no matter if you work from home or drive an hour each way to work, somewhere, somehow, the rising cost of fuel is going to bite you in the ass.

Great post Kane.

Looks like they are just fucking themselves over with this move... now a days gas is a hot topic and people are quite aware of gas prices at different stations.... they will all just fill up at the cheaper station...

I agree! This crap pisses me off to no end. They are making money hand over fist and if oil goes up they run right out and throw up a higher price when they have not even sold off the stuff they paid less for.

Actually, in the long run, rising gas prices are a very good thing for the economy. At first, it will hurt badly. But because of that, it will encourage investment in more energy-efficient solutions (public transportation, efficient cars, etc.) as well as in alternative sources of energy.

Since gas prices will continue to rise (on average) for the next few decades, the sooner the economy is forced to adapt to the new situation the better.

well, in busines they can really charge what they want. The problem with "pure competition" such as gas stations is they can all get together and agree to charge so much a gallon, much like bars and pubs they can charge the same range for a drink and get away with raising prices as long as all of them do it.

Sucks. Just last week the Sunoco down the road was 4.17 per gal and at noon they were changing the price to 4.23 per gal ..and hadnt received a delivery. They are charging based on future prices. its gotta end somewhere.

No they can not. They can only go a certain point over what the company they sell for says.

If they are a shell then Shell sets a max price they can charge per gallon. At least thats how it used to be.

As if we needed more proof of price fixing:

By The Canadian Press

MONTREAL - The federal Competition Bureau says criminal charges have been laid against 13 people and 11 companies for allegedly fixing gasoline prices in four Quebec markets.

(more)
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0...ime_gas_prices

Gouging would be charging a higher price during a fix period of shortage.

It's like that here. Working in litres and Aussie dollars here (close enough to the USD these days) ...

Assuming 40 litre average tank size
$1.60/litre
Let's say 5c/litre profit

2 driveoffs = $124 worth of petrol wholesale
To recoup just that loss alone will require the purchase of 2,480 more litres, or roughly 62 full tanks. :helpme

I don't think that would wipe out all profits for the day, but it would probably put a sizeable dent in them...

Prices always go way up on a long weekend or extended break (eg xmas or new years) here, well BEFORE it starts.

I don't know what the laws in the states are but in Quebec, Ultramar was fined some 2 million dollars for price fixing.