Bryan C. Fleming

Maybe you’ve gotten these maybe you haven’t.  Whenever the price of gas goes up (like it has here in the US) these emails start flying around.  I’ve already gotten two this week.  Here’s how they work:

- Don’t buy gas from Exxon
- Since they have lower sales, they have to lower their gas price
- This starts a price war and drives the price of gas down

For it to happen we all have to work together.  But how do you get a few million people to boycott Exxon?  By forwarding around emails– That’s how!

Hey, I’m in agreement that we’re being taken for a ride.  The blood donation every summer is getting old, and I’ll even play along and go to the guy on the next corner that’s not a Shell or Exxon station.  But let’s really think about it.

So Exxon looses some cash and lowers the price of gas from $3.29 to $3.27.  You can bet the guy on the corner won’t lower his price because his pumps are getting drained daily from all his new found business.  We’re all going to keep up the fight right?  We’re going to keep paying $3.29 when Exxon across the street is at $3.27.  Good, let’s keep it going. 

Exxon lowers again to $3.25 a gallon.  Now, I don’t know about your town but here in Detroit the news channels take 5 minutes every hour to tell you where the cheapest gas is in town.  I’ll guarantee if this happened people would be out in front of the Exxon Stations fighting over gas!  News trucks would be out front of the Stations telling the world “Gas prices you won’t believe….Watch our full report at 6”.  It would be chaos.

So when you get these emails, play along.  I am.  We’ll get some great YouTube videos out of it if we can actually get Exxon to lower their price even a nickel.

Want to come out ahead this summer with higher gas prices? read my post last year about buying stock in an oil company.
 

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