Petrol Cost Cutting Article Discussion

anewman

Still 92.9p at a Shell station near me, I'm surprised. I guess the price will be up soon though.

Warm engines are more fuel efficient and have less emissions than a cooler engine. I am going to replace my thermostat (cost of thermostat £5.24). My current one will have been in service 14 years. Although the car works fine, and the thermostat is definitely closing and opening, as I understand it, over time they tend to lose performance and ability to adapt to the temperature of coolant. My car appears to be running somewhat cool and I have done my best to remove any airlocks.

It seems it is common practice for some people to leave the thermostat out of the car if it fails shut, which seems ridiculous considering the low price of them and the fuel saving, and emissions implications.

Darling

I am fed up with putting up with the increasing cost of fuel and the frustration of needing to purchase it! I received this mail and want to give it as much exposure as possible........this is what I call proper Consumer Revenge!

>We are hitting 99.9p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with
paying over £1 a litre!!!!

(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, if
you can avoid it, DON'T purchase ANY petrol 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! Get the drift??? 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. LET 'S MAKE THE DIFFERENCE!!!

anewman

Darling wrote: »

I received this mail and want to give it as much exposure as possible........this is what I call proper Consumer Revenge!

IMO the only way is repeated protests, probably like the go slows we had a while back, with a clear message to the government on taxation. Taxation is more a problem than the oil companies setting their prices. This would need to happen more than one day though and would need enough numbers taking part to make it impossible for any police intervention to be effective.

Maybe even blockades outside fuel depots to prevent fuel leaving.

You tell millions of people not to buy fuel and they will laugh and buy fuel as they need it to get where they want. No idiots going to catch the bus and go by watching everyone else fill up. This is why you can easily tax petrol unfortunately and not many will complain.

Darling

The email was not suggesting that people stop buying petrol just that they boycot the biggest company to force a price drop. Past blockades of fuel depots proved to be a waste of time. Also, it impacted more on consumers than fuel companies. Unfortunately, if you try something and it doesn't work, trying the same thing again (even louder and longer) will usually get you the same results.

Protesting by boycotting one company allows consumers to carry on life as usual. All they have to do is be more choosy about where they buy their fuel.

This government is very sensitive to pressure from big business, as we all know. Maybe these businesses could put pressure on the government to reduce fuel tax. The alternative is to either do nothing but swallow the increases in fuel prices, or engage in the same sort of protests that proved so ineffective before.

anewman

We certainly need to adopt more of a collective "french" style attitude to doing something about it, rather than sitting in our car seats and paying up, if we want the price to go down.

Darling

.....I agree and I'm sure with a little encouragement our government and these big companies will start to listen.

Neild_2

The idea of not buying from ESSO Shell or BP has been floated around for a while now and could well be a good course of action for us as consumers to take. It requires very little effort on our part, but if enough people do it then the consequences could be very interesting. I know of at least 50 people who are now doing this (myself included). more direct actions have a more negative effect on the individual but this course of action has very little impact on me as an individual am my driving habits but hopefully the combined results of enough people could change the current state of affairs.

kipskabin

According to snopes.com this is a hoax. There are similar ones in the USA too.

Whizzbang

Four easy steps to save around 4p off every £1 worth of fuel:

1. Fill up at a Tesco station
2. Pay at kiosk and present your Tesco Clubcard.
3. Receive Clubcard points at 1p per £ spent.
4. As advised by Martin, do not waste your points in store but convert them into Clubcard Deals vouchers at 4 times their face value. You have now effectively got almost 4p per litre back, given the current price of petrol and diesel.

Two easy steps to save around 9p off every £1 worth of fuel:

1. When Tesco are running their regular Spend £50 in Store & Get 5p per Litre Off Fuel promotion, spend £50 in store.
2. Receive coupon at the checkout and present it at the filling station along with your Clubcard.
3. You have now saved 5p per litre in cash plus the above 4p in the £ on whatever Clubcard deal you fancy.

You do the maths. I thank you.