A friend sent me this email... What does eveyone think?

[SensibleManiac]

I got this from a friend of mine the other day, what does everyone think?
I think it's worth a shot.



THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' GAS FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $.90 PER LITRE....Hopefully

This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Haliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this PLEASE.

Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.


This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy gas on a certain day' campaign that was going around last April or May!
It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!

I hear we are going to hit close to $ 2.00 a litre by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action. The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to 'hurt' ourselves by refusing to buy gas.

It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.
BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can Really work. Please read on and join with us!

By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $1.17 for regular unleaded in my town.

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre of gas is CHEAP at $1.14, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace...not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas.

But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies, ESSO and SHELL.

If they are not selling any gas, 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 Shell gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp 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 30 people. If each of us send it to 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 group 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!

(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am... so trust me on this one.

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all in. I suggest that we not buy from Esso and Shell UNTIL 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. THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO BELOW THE $1.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

 

[Kacey]

I've seen this before, and it has as little chance of working as the "don't buy gas for a day" concept - because the smaller gas chains are all owned by the larger ones, and even if you don't buy from a chain labeled "Shell" or "Esso", you're still getting gas from the same refineries. The same concept was floated a couple of years ago as a means of stopping funding of terrorists by avoiding specific manufacturers (see snopes for details). The larger companies are too interwoven for a scheme like this to be effective, however much we might like it to work.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

ok, I'm game. Neither have any stations near me that I recall so it's an easy do.

 

[SensibleManiac]

I see your logic Kacey.
I figure that they would still have to bear the brunt of the individual owners of gas stations who would complain that their business is going down dramatically. Gas stations cost money to operate as well, now, although I'm not sure how they operate, whether they are franchises or not, the fact remains that if they start to see great losses to their individual locations this might cause them to lower the price.
I do however see your logic, in that the gas all comes from the same places in the end.
But the individual stations must have some role in this as well.
How great the significance?
I don't know, but I think it is worth a shot.

 

[MA-Caver]

The concept/idea is a good one yes, but as pointed out Big Oil owns parts in many many other smaller companies. And yes, the gas comes out of their refineries to those smaller gas chains. So not buying gas from say, Chevron stations bearing their logo isn't going to hurt them because Chevron has invested interests in those smaller chains. Same with Esso, Exxon, BP and so forth. So the idea has merit but application and intended effect is going to be difficult at best.
Plus how are you going to coordinate such an effort with even 30 million people? Who's going to harvest that many e-mails and print that many fliers to mail out and decide: "Ok, today is ban Chevron day and tomorrow is ban Exxon stations today..."
The postage alone is going to cost a small fortune. And having that many e-mails even divided among say 1000 people to send out to everyone on their lists... lot of work.

Right now gas prices have dropped, marginally where it's (today) at $3.34 a gallon down from $3.93 last week. A .50 cent drop in prices. But I still didn't break the 3 gallon mark when putting in $10.00 worth.
People I know and meet are now starting to "fill up" and then drive til their tanks run to just below half a tank (however many gallons that may be for their individual cars) and filling up again. I suppose that is psychological but eventually it'll get to the point to where even that is useless because they may inevitably one day drive more than their average and drop to 1/4 tank by the time they get home and thus now are back where they didn't want to be.

 

[fireman00]

same rerun of emails that went around last year. While it might send a message that the gas buying public is ticked off with the price of fuel there is very little that it will accomplish.

Exxon/ Mobile/ whomever won't feel a thing. They do not control the price of a barrel of oil - speculation, the value of the dollar and supply/ demand are the controlling factors that are impacting us now. We're in the perfect storm for 4 dollar a gallon gas - weak dollar, India and China are using much more oil then just 3 years ago, countries like Venezuala and Saudia Arabia are subsidizing oil so that their population can afford to buy heating/ cooking/ transportation fuels and speculators are buying fuel contracts for the 3rd quarter instead of buying other commodities which is probably the driving force behind sky high prices.

Its been said that the US is far behind the rest of the world in paying our "fair share" for a gallon of gas... we're like 45th in the ranks.

Unless we have an alternative fuel to move to there will be no impact.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp

 

[brandy]

My brother sent me the same email

Sounds like a brilliant idea. And, since I have seen it through my email, myspace and now here, it seems like it is actually getting distributed.
Now, if we can just get people to follow it.