Today on the way to work, the petrol prices had reached their lowest price on the weekly price cycle, on the way home within an hour of each other, up went the price by an average of 15 cents, to me this is illegal price fixing, as the day varies when it goes up, so SOMEONE must be giving the word to shove up the prices if by email, phone or SMS, it can't be a COINCIDENCE that they all go up within an hour of each other, we motorists are being treated like MUGS, the RACV are too gutless to do anything about it, look at how they let all Goverments get away with speed camera RORTS, if you owned a supermarket and every week at a certain time you put the price of milk up 10%, you would be dragged through the courts for price fixing, look at what happened in the cardboard packaging industry a few years ago millions of dollars in fines, a spokesperson for the RACV a Mr. John Shinybum, advised motorists to fillup when prices were cheap, well thanks for the good advice, now i remember why my car is insured with Shannons and not with you, as you are lazy pen pusher that gets money for nothing, i don't give a stuff about about if they are high or not, just stop pretending its all ok, lucky i have a good economic 156 JTS, an angry Colin.
Colin, you are 100% right. Add the ACCC to the gutless pencil-pusher mob :(
I was living in the US in the early '80s when BP was found guilty of overcharging consumers, the penalty was to sell fuel for a period of 6 months at 15% below the going market price, should have seen the lines around the block ;D
I have been in a service station and witnessed the owner taking a call from the "competition" just up the road, advising him of what time and what price to adjust to.......and he then called the next 2 servo guys down the road at the next intersection.....and so on I would imagine. >:(
Quote from: kartone on August 25, 2011, 12:37:51 PM
Colin, you are 100% right. Add the ACCC to the gutless pencil-pusher mob :(
I was living in the US in the early '80s when BP was found guilty of overcharging consumers, the penalty was to sell fuel for a period of 6 months at 15% below the going market price, should have seen the lines around the block ;D
Not convinced that was a bright idea, good punishment for BP, too bad for their competitors who would have struggled to get business and possibly close down ... letting BP jack up their prices later with less competition. As long as there was cheap gas for all the pick-up's.
Do petrol prices cycle so much in other states? What is the reason for it?
I registered up to this site and get a daily email telling me the prices in my area each day ... http://motormouth.com.au/ It covers other states.
WA prices don't vary during the day due to the state government implementing Fuel Watch, which means the retailers must register their prices for the following day and they can't change it. Don't know if it stops the fluctuations.
Quote from: Steve S on August 26, 2011, 10:53:06 PM
Do petrol prices cycle so much in other states? What is the reason for it?
Nope, come to the land of milk and honey, or something like that anyway. Down here in Tassie, we don' have this system that is endemic to the mainland. The price we pay is the same every day, albeit it is not cheap !! It only fluctuates with the vagrencies of the international oil market price and what the oil companies are charging. There is some level of differences between servos but that is up to each servo to decide.
Like Col, I too am glad I have a JTS 156 as my daily drive, it is so bloody economical.
When the cardboard cowboys got busted and fined millions of dollars, i didn't care or know about it, when you go to the fruit market and the prices go up, thats because the produce is fresher or in big demand, when all the petrol stations phone each other to put the prices up because it is Thursday afternoon, you know that the RACV and ACCC and oil companys are off playing Golf with each other, Colin.
For sure Colin, hence at least down here in Tassie we don't have such idiotic nonsense happening like you guys do on the mainland. Yet another reason why it is good here.
A few predictions for 2011, 1. Seby Vetal will win the formula championship this year, 2. Mark Webber will still have trouble with his launch control going into 'anti stall' mode on the start line, 3.The Victorian Goverment will endorse speed camera's as a way of contributing to road safety, 4. Club member Colin Thomas will continue to eat too many donuts, 5.Petrol prices will go up tommorow [thursday] in Victoria, 6. RACV spokesperson Mr John Shinybum will call it a petrol price spike and advise motorists to fill up their cars when the petrol is at its bottom price cycle, Colin.
agh but you forgot one, though perhaps that is not such a bad thing. Bloody ATG is back on the box and while, thankfully no mention of Pretzels or an appearance from Warnie, it is still crap, and aimed squarely at bogans who only love Utes, and V8s.
Give me strength !! You don't eat so many donuts do you MD. Man you will need to give them up or perhaps the shitboxes can run on them next year.
Australian Top Gear is an embarrasment, i should know because i watched most of them, hoping it would get better, but it didn't, oh and another thing, for the first time ever, i may be wrong!, i predicted that petrol prices would go up on thursday afternoon, but it seems now it will be delayed until friday in time for the weekend, Colin.
I reckon next time i buy another car[Alfa Romeo], it will be a diesel as here in Victoria the diesel price remains the same, but the petrol price goes up 15 cents per litre, usually on pay day thursday or before the weekend on friday, then drops down during the week, because they can, luckily i have a good economical JTS, or i would have something to whinge about, Colin.
On a big drive around Melbourne today, all the prices of petrol are going up, Caltex is always the first to hike their prices up 15cents per litre, with the no name brands being the last, but the no name brands have ethanol in their petrol, LPG is now only half the price of petrol, hardly worth all the bother, unless you drive a million kilometres per year, Ford must be doing it tough with the dedicated LPG Falcon, as ever diesel remains stable, spokesperson for the RACV Mr. John Shinybum said motorists should fill when the price cycle is at its lowest, because as sure as hell i am not doing any thing about it, Colin.
A couple of things people need to remember.
1st of all, oil companies are VERY powerful, private organizations (it's hundreds of billion if not multi-trillion dollar world wide industry). If they want to shove the price of fuel up, then no government has any power to do anything about it. Some public facade where some puppet politician is on the idiot box condemning the oil companies is only there to try and appease the public, but it's nothing more than a pissy little smoke screen.
2nd, as I'm sure everyone is aware, when the price of fuel goes up the government's take also goes up.
Now lets all sing along together: "Conflict of interest!" Well done boys and girls!
The way I see it, the only way that fuel prices in this country will ever be respectable is when we sort out our rogue government and bitch slap them back into alignment with what the public, those people who pay for them, actually want.
Have set in absolute stone a reasonable taxable amount, say GST, that is ABSOLUTELY LOCKED SOLID at 10% and anybody who suggests otherwise will be publicly flogged!.
Then, and only then, can we rely on OUR government to tell the oil companies what is acceptable in selling OUR resources back to us.
But it will never happen............
Hi all
Well I have worked in the service station game and at a few outlets, about every 4 hours, you would ring the opposition and check their prices, you would then enter them into your computer and wait to hear from headquarters whether to put the price up or down.
where is the ACCC and the motorist association ?
Listen kartone, the ACCC, RACV, State Goverment, Federal Goverment and the oil companys are playing a round of golf together, on the day the petrol price 'spikes', they are too important to listen to people like us, as we are only motorists, if it was up to me, i would bust them in a week, but then i would most likely end up like the founder of AGIP Petroleum in Italy who had similar ideas, Colin.
Found these today. Graph left is petrol, right is diesel. Adjusted to AUD$
In Melbourne now LPG prices have gone through the roof 88cents a litre at BP in the northern suburbs, Mr. John Shinybum from the RACV, said Motorists should fill up before the price 'spikes', and stop moaning about it, as if you fill up your LPG tank when its expensive, you have no one to blame but yourself, Colin.
Quote from: colcol on March 06, 2012, 09:03:22 PM
In Melbourne now LPG prices have gone through the roof 88cents a litre at BP in the northern suburbs, Mr. John Shinybum from the RACV, said Motorists should fill up before the price 'spikes', and stop moaning about it, as if you fill up your LPG tank when its expensive, you have no one to blame but yourself, Colin.
I was shocked to see LPG for 91.9 locally only two days ago. I've never seen it that high before, even in the Top End or Nullabor!! I shudder to think what it costs in the remote areas now.
Today in Melbourne, on the way to work at 4-30am, the petrol stations were putting their prices up for the Labor day long weekend, this is so on the way to work you will have to fill for that trip away, prices rose about 15 cents per litre, the oil companies claimed it was due to the trouble in Libia or was it Syria or the Greek dept crisis or something, spokesman for the R.A.C.V., Mr. John Shinybum said, going on the history of holiday periods, motorists should know that there will be a price 'spike', just before the long weekend, and its only a coincidence that the prices all went up within an hour of each other, and it definately not price fixing, weary driver filling up his JTS, commented that the only 'spike' he would like to see is one inserted into the posterior of the R.A.C.V. and the A.C.C.C., Colin.
Really only a good way of getting a conversation going.
The oil companies will always rule this debate.
They are very smart and start the cycle weeks out from a weekend, easter, xmas etc so they can say - no just part of the normal cycle.
I stopped worrying about it years ago, just very happy the Prado gets economical for a big car on long trips :-)
No where near the GTV6 and its roughly 8lit per 100klm to Bathurst and back.
Maybe i'll ride the Ducati more when the petrol price is high.
Just my view.
Shane
Yep, price fixing, sky rocketed today, just in time for school holidays and easter.
If the fixers were really smart, they would have started it last couple of weeks with all the motorsport going on.
I heard on the radio 20-3-12 that "today petrol prices are going to skyrocket to $1.58 per litre", and it did, on the way home all the prices had gone up, [but there is no price fixing, because that would be illegal], not a sausage in any of the petrol stations, a day later, the Caltex's had dropped their prices 4 cents per litre, and the independants 6 cents per litre, and the customers were returning, why can they whack the price up 15 cents one day, and drop it 6 cents the next day?..... because they can!, and they know they are never going to get busted, because the Competition watch poodle is after the flight centre, because years ago they may have fiddled some holidays prices some where, i hope they spend lots of our money busting those crooks at the Flight centre, they should get the [electric] chair, Colin.
It was in the Herald Sun this week, so it is an incorruptable source, Petrol prices have become more unpredictable than ever, in the 13 price 'spikes' this year, Mondays and Wednesdays were cheapest 4 times and Thursdays and Fridays were cheapest twice, the old cheap Tuesday was true only once, RACV spokesman Mr. John Shinybum, [not his real name], said the petrol cycle, which once only lasted a week, had never been more unpreditable, unwary motorists faced paying up to $15 more till fill a typical family sedan, if they waited too long, when the duration of the 'spike' changes unpreditably that confuses motorists, unless you plan to fill up on cheaper days, you will pay more, Mr. Shinybum said, the longest cycle was a record 22 days in February, but now the 'spike' is happening every 12 to 13 days, spokesman for the petrol industry, Mr. Fat Bastard, [not his real name], on hearing of this, laughed, sent a message to motorists by pulling his pants down and breaking wind loudly, Mr. Shinybum, agreed by nodding fast and saying all this gas reminds me that motorists should consider converting their cars to gas, Colin, [not a fat bastard at all].
Yep, bugger me, $1.72.9 for PULP this morning. Do I feed the family or drive my Alfa, tough decision? What would you do?
I go past 4 petrol stations close to each other and last wednesday, the Caltex bumped its PULP to $1.70, the other 3 didn't for a day, the 3 did a roaring trade for a day, in response due to no customers the Caltex dropped it prices $1.57 for PULP, and got some customers back, how can you bang up the prices and then drop them down in a day?, price fixing?, perhaps you could complain to that ALLEGED motorist organisation the R.A.C.V., and they might for the first time in their life do something for the motorists, but i wouldn't hold my breath, Colin.
Colcol
The oil companies raise and lower petrol prices whenever and as often as they like simply because they can and there not one politician with the intelligence and or the intestinal fortitude (read that as balls) to do anything about it. The Federal Government certainly won't do anything which might upset their nice little earner as every price rise at the pumps means a boost for federal treasury and no treasurer would knock back any extra revenue, at least if he wanted to keep his job.
The oil companies always maintain that they don't control the pirce of petrol, but if that is the case why then do the service station operators have to ring a secret telephone number to find out what price to charge.
There has been numerous inquiries into petrol pricing and oil company practices et al and each one has produced the same result - There is no evidence of collusion or price gougng of motorists by/among the oil companies, it is caused by the rise of the Australian $, it is casued by the fall of the Australian $, the high exchange rate of trhe Australian $ is the reason, the price of Singapore crude oil, add you own reasons here.
The main reason why the many and numerous inquiries have failed is pretty simple, the oil companies employ smarter lawyers, pay them more than do governments and oil company people who appear at any inquiry are simply smarter than the politicians conducting the inquiry. The politicians are simply not smart enough to ask the right questions and, as a result, the oil companies only tell the inquiry members what they need to know which is not necessarily the answer to the question asked by said ill-informed inept politicians and the dumb-ass politicians are not smart enough to know that they are being snowed yet agin.
The RACV is no different to any of the other lap-dog motoring organisations whose function is supposedly to look after their members. The RACV spokespersons are good at talking but utterly impotent when it comes to making the oil companies taking any notice. They have no power or authority over anyone, least of all oil companies. Quoting RACV and other spokepersons about fuel price spikes only give the media something to fill in time on TV news or space in the print media.
The ACCC is also as worthless as any other body when it comes to taking action on petrol pricing. The Petrol Commissioner which comes under the precinct of the ACCC is being paid $300,000 a year. For what? There would have to be a very good case to charge this person with fraud for taking money under false pretences.
Any pronouncements from the Petrol Commissioner sound more like the opening address to the local comedy festival than they do in being meaningful comments about fuel prices. The only harm any comments from the Petrol Commissioner are likely to produce would be when the oil company executives fall off their chairs in the boardroom laughing their heads off when they heard the comments.
The head of the A.C.C.C., Mr D. Sim said they were going to look into petrol price fixing between the oil companys, they had evidence that the oil companys had been communicating between each other and monitoring each others pricing and setting the days when the price would spike, and yes the head of the A.C.C.C. is called Mr. Sim, look it up, Colin.
I haven't seen much of a fluctuating price the last three weeks, PULP has been around $1.70 around my area (western suburbs) so for the first time ever my tiny Sprint took $80. All I can say about the high price is lucky I get 8 litres/100k.
I went shopping at Coles today and noticed that if I bought 2 slabs of coke I get 20 cents off a litre of petrol. WTF? They also have the consistent 'saving'? of 4 cents/litre when you spend more than $30 in their store.
So I'd like to ask the question: What does going shopping for food have to do with the price of petrol?
Soon I'm going to fit a tiny engine to run a generator and fit a high torque ELECTRIC motor to my gearbox!, And I'm going to get hydrogen from water through Electrolysis and store it in some old oxy bottles to run the tiny motor! Then the oil companies, government and who ever else that has their finger in the pie can have their petrol. ;)
Or you could simply do what the bazilians and most south american countries are doing to get around in their cars. They turn their old used deep frying oil into deisel (home brew) and run their cars on home brew deisel instead.
There is some very interetsing American muscle in brazil and throughout South America being run on transplanted deisel engines using home brew deisel.
It makes a visit to the fish and chip shop more interesting - to ask for the old oil rather than the Friday family pack.
1750GT
Hey 1750GT, i wonder if the used deep frying oil 'spikes' like it does here in Victoria, on Friday morning it goes up 12 cents per litre, because everyone has fish and chips on a Friday night, and then drifts down 1 cent per litre per day until it 'spikes' again, but that would be price fixing, thats illegal, the A.C.C.C. headed by Mr. D. Sim, would be looking to bust some small fish and chip shop vendors for some publicity on the news so it looks like they are doing their job, Colin.
Petrol pricing has gone mad in Victoria, this month it was $1.28, $1.35, $1.37 and on Tuesday $1.51, Petrol cycle or as the RACV calls it a spike is now 7 days, 10 days or 14 days?, who would know, in the AGE on Thursday, Tandburg has a cartoon of the ACCC, sitting outside a petrol station in a car with ACCC on the car, with the ACCC official asleep in the car with 'Z-Z-Z-Z's coming out of the car to indicate the ACCC asleep at the wheel....while the slightly devious looking Petrol Station attendant putting up a $1.58 price, replacing the $1.40 sign, all while the ACCC official is fast asleep, would post cartoon, [if i knew how], but may breach copywright law, then i would have the ACCC after me, Colin.
One of the things that has annoyed me is how the price of 98 octane used to be 6c a litre more than 91 octane. Then at some stage, the oil companies realised that the popular press focused only on the 91 octane price in their reporting, and that increasingly a larger percentage of buyers were using 95 and 98 octane. So my guess is that they worry about what the 91 octane price is, but they will continue to slide the price of 95 and 98 octane price up - it is now about 14c a litre more. And of course they all go up in unison.
I'm not sure that there has been any production cost increase, so it is likely to banking pure profit.
The problem for the ACCC is they have to prove collusion for price fixing. I think there is another issue called price signalling, where it is too easy to create a new price which everyone else follows, but that is inevitable. Frustrating for consumers.
Torben
Can you imagine if the same thing happened to milk, bread or beer, everyweek it went up 15 cents at every supermarket, within an hour of each other?, then the ACCC would have to wake up and do something, but of course, we are motorist cash cows, so we are open to this sort of palava, its only started to happen in the last 10 years or so, here in Victoria, Colin.
Well it seems the ACCC have finally woken up that the big petrol chains have been working together to co-ordinate petrol price movements by posting petrol price hikes to the Oil Price Watch, [ OPW], a service ran by a Queensland company that was able to propose price increases in the Melbourne market, by using a members only website.
OPW provide Petrol Station chains, who are the only ones allowed to subscribe, with proposed petrol prices, then the chains respond to price increases within half an hour.
"This we believe, is very concerning behaviour", ACCC chairman Rod Simms said, "We allege, that they can propose prices, respond to prices, we allege they can send a price increase, see how the others respond, and therefore interact that way, Colin.
Peopl interstate, from the ACT ,are lucky. Our petrol price hasnt changed for almost 2 years. 91 is always 155.9 and the stuff we use is almost 1.80 and that is wrong.
So you guys are lucky that you have these so called cycles, the wheel fell our bike years ago.
I haven't read through this thread... But I'll drop my input here.
I used to be close friends with a girl whose parents ran ***** just a few hundred meters from my house.
On a fancy computer behind the counter is an internet connection. Every hour on the second, that computer updates a single little box. Can anyone guess what it updates?
They received notification from head office regarding the prices they charge. They have 5 minute deadline to change the prices on the board out the front if it went up or down.
Surprisingly, they don't choose the prices of petrol, it was the head office who told them. It was a franchise though so that doesn't at all seem odd to me.
And how hard would it be for the arseclowns at the ACCC to find this out, you just send someone to wait in a car and when the price goes up, walk in and ask them why.
It is friggin price fixing which is illegal, run any sort of business and try this lurk and you will be in trouble, just like the cardboard kings were a few years ago and got fined a few million dollars for their trouble.
Got worse since the supermarkets got involved, wonder what petrol company ALDI will jump into bed with?, Colin.
Down here in Tassie, we don't have this upwards and downwards movement of petrol depending on which day of the week it is. Its just not cheap. Probably in part due to the extra distance it takes getting across the fishpond from the big island to the small one.
But I agree with the views re 95 and 98 being so much more expensive than 91, which is what the media seem to concentrate on.
Hard to disagree with any of the comments posted here. It is an indisputable facts that Australia does not have one politician smart enough or possess the political will to have a serious go at the oil industry. Besides, no federal treasurer will ever contemplate doing anything whatsoever about killing off the proverbial goose that continues to lay the golden eggs and every price increase of fuel adds more GST revenue to the federal government's coffers to waste on some other useless policy. It should also be remembered that 'price cycle' is simply the oil industry's own terminology for price manipulation. The price of petrol will continue to rise and fall and rise again and again plainly and simply because the oil industry can. No point in calling for yet another inquiry into the fuel industry, every such inquiry to date has failed completely because the oil industry employs smarter lawyers than the government does and they pay their lawyers far more than governments do.
An old legal adage: Justice is what you get when you have run out of money.
Over here in Adelaide Costco is about to open and they have built a Costco Gasoline outlet right alongside a Shell on Churchill Rd.
They will quite possibly price cheaper or will they just follow the big players prices - it will be interesting to see how they operate.
Yesterday in Melbourne, the petrol price went up from $1.35 to $1.65, because it had been down a few days and the weekend was coming up.
Then noticed on Television that the price of oil had just fallen to $80 per barrel???.
I am so pigheaded, [ oh really? ], that i won't fill up when the price goes up, because then its victory to the price manipulators.
Once i was driving along the Eastern Freeway and i ran out of petrol.
Always carry, [ illegally ] petrol in the boot, so i was fueling up the car at the side of the freeway, and a truck drove past a seem to spray 'liquid' on me, looked up and the truck had a load of portaloo's on it with 'dunny's are us' on the side, i think that was karma for past sins, Colin.
Ew. :)