Gas war: Station sets price at 49 cents

[Robbien]

By Associated Press


CLOVIS, N.M. -- A price war between two Clovis gasoline stations reached a fever pitch when one store dropped its fuel price to 49 cents per gallon.

The price war between Town and Country and Allsup's convenience stores snarled traffic in the eastern New Mexico town as about 200 vehicles lined up Wednesday to buy cheap gas, blocking the stores and a local fire station, Clovis Fire Marshal Allan Silvers said.

Silvers said he put an end to the battle because the traffic was a public safety hazard. He asked the stores "if there was anything they could do reasonably to remedy the situation."

Allsup's raised its fuel price from 49 cents to $2.83 a gallon and Town and Country raised its 99 cents per gallon price tag to $2.86, Silvers said.

"They raised prices on their own accord to dispel the traffic and after that was done, as you can imagine, people lost interest," Silvers said.

http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/07/29/news/doc44ca198a2ee5f652184689.txt

[merwin]

1. They raised prices on their own accord AND the fire marshal 'put an end

to it'? You can't have it both ways...

[geomon666]

2. You mean...the stations can set their own prices?

Gasp!

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. Yeah, and the stations can also go bankrupt

They can give away gas, too.

[Zynx]

5. Exactly. Station profits are very small.

They only have a couple dozen cents of margin.

[geomon666]

6. So what was the point of lowering the price to 49 cents?

I mean, if station profit is so small, they're not going to get s*** out of 49 cents a gallon. Why bother?

[Telly Savalas]

7. Because if you believe you can handle the financial pain

better than your competitor, you do it to try to drive her out of business.

It's called predatory pricing. It's a way for big business to purge themselves of smaller independent competitors.

In some states there are laws against selling gas at below cost.

[enuffs_enuffs]

4. There was a gas station that tried to sell way below corp...

suggested prices. They (the corp) sent in goons that destroyed the pumps, ripped off anything that had it's emblem on it and canceled its contract with the indie owner.

I don't think that the diversion from suggested corp. practices was the culprit in motivating the corps actions, but rather it was an article in the local paper where the station owner said that selling at such a high price was immoral. It's been about 3 years since I saw it so I've long lost the link... sorry.

May be if "war" is mentioned in any capacity at all, it's all good.

[Skarbrowe]

8. I lived in Clovis over 20 years ago. I accused them of price fixing then.

Clovis, and I'm sorry if I'm offending anyone who lives there, is one of the, well, let's just say less attractive places to live in the US. People would actually call it the armpit of the USA. It's really West Texas because it's only 10 miles from the Texas border. That flat barren land that is just simply ugly. It's two hours in any direction to get to any town that has anything at all to do. Everyone knew that the gas stations would get together and fix their prices. Stores did the same. Competition was too far away.
Sad, sad, very sad thing for me is that I might be moving back there soon to get away from Florida (I have several good reasons, hurricanes being just one of them) and to help out a friend whose been stuck there most of her life. She unfortunately works security for one of the places mentioned. She views the security camera from all of the stores and constantly feels like someone is going to come after her.

Back in the early 80's I wrote

Back home in Clovis
there ain't no bus
can't even take a taxi in to town
if you're just passin' through
make sure that's all you do
cause this ain't a place you want to settle down

Lots of people there felt differently. But as usual, they were the ones that owned everything.