Boycotting Esso & BP to bring down petrol prices?

Got this on an e-mail. I'm not a fan of forwarding on this sort of stuff on e-mail - so thought I'd stick it up here for people to read if they want. Guess it could work if everyone did it. Though I'd miss out on my Nectar points from BP .

"We are hitting 95p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1 a ltr.

Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

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.

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 marketplace not sellers.

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, 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 whimp out on me 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 itto 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! 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 8 days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! 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".

Hmmm.... don't know what anyone else thinks.

Sounds like a good idea. We need to something about it. However, isn't most of the petrol cost the tax/duty on it (IE something BP/Esso cannot control)?

I prefer not to buy from either of them anyway. I had reasons for doing it in the first place but being a bit absent minded I can't remember what they were. They must have been good, though.

What bollox - oil's at $66/pb - a buyers market - LMAO!

Fuel companies make bugger all profit on forecourt fuel sales. It's the government that are responsible for these outrageous prices.

This is true. The duty on fuel is shocking and utterly outrageous. Harangue your MP and Tony Bliar, as it's not the oil companies but the government. If the US had our level of tax on fuel there would be national outrage and riots. How come we're a bunch of mugs?


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They may not make much profit on the forecourt but they are still raking in billions.....

Therefore why cant they reduce the price at the pump?

Originally Posted by mysteryjimbo

They may not make much profit on the forecourt but they are still raking in billions.....

Therefore why cant they reduce the price at the pump?

But, why would they bother at all, if they were making a loss?

And I really don't see why anyone ever has a problem with big companies making profits in the billions. It's just a return on an even more collosal investment.

Originally Posted by mysteryjimbo

They may not make much profit on the forecourt but they are still raking in billions.....

Therefore why cant they reduce the price at the pump?

Say they made 3p per litre, that'd result in huge profits, but it'd still limit the amount they could cut prices and remain in business. The fuel companies have to pay for the fuel, transport it, etc. the government get their larger cut, for S.F.A. surely it's the government whose share of the profits should be reduced (ie significant lowering of the tax on fuel)?

If its all tax then I wont be boycotting them. I have no problem in taxing people for using their cars. There are an awful lot of people using their cars for silly journeys i.e. the school run. The government is doing its best to price people out of making un-necessary journeys.

Huge cars with single people in get my goat.

The current system is admittedly flawed, but ideas are floating around to improve it.