Let Them Fight It Out

One of the hardest parts of dealing with a tragedy is knowing when it is ok for life to return to normal. When it is ok to start cracking jokes again, especially since the Boston Marathon is such a community event and the odds are really good you know someone who was running, had family running or was volunteering along the way and they probably don't think anything is funny right now? Is it still too soon to start making fun of runners (because some of them are really pushing it and making jokes is part of my coping mechanism)? Well, in an effort to return to normal I'm going to try to get my routine around this blog going once again. That means complaining about stupid things because I can. After another day full of bad information maybe it'll do everyone some good to get their minds off things for a while...

One of my favorite commercials floating around right now features a man going into a gas station and asking if he can buy yesterday's gas at a reduced price. When the guy working the desk tells him that isn't possible, the customer starts inquiring about other ways he may be able to get a discount - buying in bunk, frequent shopper discount or perhaps having a membership card? All of his suggestions are shot down, but the commercial does a very good job of pointing out how insane it is that gas is one of the few in-demand items which never offers any kind of sales price. What they tell you to pay is what you are going to pay and that is the end of the negotiations. If you stop and think about it the concept is all kinds of crazy because there are tons of items we need even more than gasoline (water, bread, milk) and yet those products occasionally go on sale or you can shop around for the best price and usually find a significant difference. Somehow gas (which we actually don't need - we just like more than taking public transportation) has been immune to all of this. If you want to find the best price on gas you just have to drive around looking for it (ironically wasting gas) but thankfully it looks as though that may finally be starting to change.

There has been a mini-concession in the price of gasoline in that a lot of local stations will offer to take a few cents off if you pay cash (which is really just a clever way these station owners have come up with to avoid having to pay the credit card fees while looking like they are passing the savings along to you, not that I will bypass a gift of any kind). But, even more common lately is for gas stations to tie in with a nearby supermarket and say that for a set amount of money you spend there you can get a few cents off at the pump. (Typically it's something like spend $100 on groceries to get .10 off a gallon of gas. If you have ever done the math you would know it takes about .07 before you start to see a big change in how much gas you get compared to what it would be under normal prices, so it really costs about $200 before you see a big difference in how much gas you get for your $20.) The math is still very much out of whack but it is better than nothing since as we talked about people need food and water more than they need gas. What is even better is that the stations which offer this program are forcing the ones which don't to adjust and for once the people behind the wheel are coming out on top.

I know of one intersection near me which has three different gas stations on each corner, directly across from one another. When you come off the highway you have your choice and the only thing distinguishing them from one another was company affiliation. For the longest time this intersection has symbolized everything which is wrong with this situation. Those stations should be fighting one another for my business but instead they all kept the prices equal with one another, perfectly willing to lose customers to each other because they were supremely confident there was enough money to go around for all of them. However, in the last couple of months two of the three stations have linked up with local grocery stores and begun offering ways to lower your gas prices. One of the promotions knocks exactly .05 off a gallon of gas with a very easily attained goal, so imagine my delight when I came to this intersection this afternoon and noticed that the one station which was not affiliated with any kind of discount program was a full .06 cheaper than the other two stations at the intersection. Did my eyes deceive me, or was this good old fashioned competition between two people who were offering the same service?

I'm fully aware that this competition still favors the gas stations, who I am sure are making more money now than ever before. We're all adults here, so I'm probably not blowing your mind when I tell you that even when a store is offering something on sale they are still making money and these oil companies would never allow their stations to offer anything which cut into the profits. Also, given the way oil companies work the most likely conclusion to this little moment of honest-to-goodness, supply-and-demand consumer advantage is that the other two stations will discontinue the promotion and the three stations will agree to go back to keeping prices at a certain level, remembering that they are united in a common cause and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The only way to affect real and permanent change is for consumers to cut down on how much they drive and seriously decrease demand, which actually happened late last year, even if it only lasted for a few short weeks. Still, it was nice to finally see an example where the public didn't have to do all the work or fundamentally change the way they live just to get a few cents off a gallon of gas. All I know is it's about time.