Pipeline card is not happening! (For those who didn't sign up or get the e-mail)

anewman

Dear Member,

Some of you may have been wondering what has happened to Pipeline Card and if we are still going. It has been a few months since we have been in touch but I can assure you we are all still here!

The Pipeline Card is about getting cheap fuel for all of us and, since we didn't have any definite news to tell you on that front, we haven't been writing to you. However, after such a long silence we thought we really needed to tell you what has been happening. This is a membership organisation after all.

Basically we have been working very hard on trying to get the card off the ground. I won't bore you with the long list of broken promises, false hopes, and corporate inactivity - anybody would think that the petrol companies didn't want to discount their product - but the short version is that our original 'partner' let us down, we have spoken to several others and the industry has clearly closed ranks against us. What a surprise!

We looked at turning Pipeline Card into a credit card with petrol discount instead of Cashback - not your first choice I am sure - or ours - but, as we envisaged it, a Pipeline Credit Card would deliver discount everywhere in the UK - not just one retail chain. None of the UK banks we spoke to had fully grasped how the Internet works and they certainly couldn't consider launching a financial product that hadn't been tried and tested by at least half a dozen other banks first. It's a shame really - nobody argued with our figures and it could have worked. I guess the banks had problems of their own to worry about.

We also looked at doing Pipeline Card following the successful Dutch model - but that won't suit everybody as you need Internet banking to make it work.

So, are we giving up? Certainly not! We have learnt a lot along the way and one of the things we have learnt - the hard way - is that 500,000 members aren't enough. We are now about to launch a new publicity campaign and we aim to double that figure within six weeks. We are very confident that one of the petrol retailers will break ranks - but only if we can get a lot more members.

Thanks to all of you who have posted on forums and told your friends about Pipeline Card, but if we are all to get cheaper fuel, then we need to keep spreading the message. Please use this link (http://www.PipelineCard.org/recommend.html) on the website to get other drivers who are interested in saving money on petrol to sign up. Send them a copy of this email if they have already heard about Pipeline Card and think that we have gone away.

Meanwhile we will continue to campaign for lower fuel duty and to look out for other genuine savings that are relevant to our members. Most aren't! Please continue to write in with your queries, suggestions and offers of help. Bear with us if it takes a little time to respond as there are only two of us working here and we both have other jobs. We do read every e-mail and we regularly add more material to our Questions & Answers (http://www.PipelineCard.org/qna.html) as a direct result of your feedback.

That's it for now. Don't forget that you can resign as a member at any time by sending a blank email to unsubscribe@PipelineCard.org. (don't just reply to this email - it's the wrong address, OK?)

Best wishes

Ben Scammell - Pipeline Card Founder

Emphases added. I think they're hoping for too much to get 500,000 members in 6 weeks with no firm offer of any kind of discount. My guess is it isn't going to happen.