Need another company like Payless gas
Does anyone remember Payless gas? Mr. Vandekerkhove fought big oil for years and kept his prices low to compete. He had his own tank farm up island and shopped around for the best price. We consumers benefitted from that.
However, after he sold his company to Shell, there was no more competition and Shell could set any price it wants anywhere on the Island. The story that is given is that sales drives the price down. If this is true, why would Victoria and area have the highest prices even though they have the largest population?
If one asks the competition bureau about the collusion on pricing, they come back with wanting specific information on individual gas stations. They refuse to look into the practices of industry.
Isn’t it interesting that when a refinery goes down anywhere in North America or there is a conflict in an oil producing country, the price immediately spikes. Surprisingly, every gas station runs out of the lower priced gas in their tanks and is immediately replaced with the higher priced stock. But, when the situation is reversed, suddenly these stations must now wait weeks for these same tanks to empty and be replaced with the lower priced stock. That is what I call collusion and manipulation.
So, boycotting one company’s stations does not work. It only affects the employees, who are not responsible for the price fixing. Best that can be done, in my opinion, if one is able to only put in $20 or so at a time, then the sales go down and this “might” get the message across.
We need another company like Payless. Until then, we are just money in the bank for big oil.
Ed Aiken
Cobble Hill
