Statoil Car Wash Price discreppancies

dmeehan

Statoil Top Car Wash Killarney (Park Road) €7
Statoil Top CAr Wash Cork (Kinsale Road Roundabout) €8

Why is the exact same carwash ("The Supreme") priced differently in the two garages?

sceptre

Each garage owner (assuming they're owned by different people) has obviously decided to charge a different price. One is charging more so don't use that one.

If the two owners charged the same price and all privately-held Statoil garages colluded to charge a fixed price for a service that would be price fixing. Just don't use the more expensive one.

Saruman

sceptre i dont think your example can account for this... you are bassically saying that a company with more than one branch even if each branch is independantly owned, if they have the same prices then thats price fixing? Since supermarkets do that that would mean they are price fixing. Best example is Super valu, one chain but each one owned and run by an independant business man.


So its the same as petrol prices then, if they can get away with charging more they will!!

dmeehan

i would usually use the Tesco carwash in Killarney which is only €6, but it has been out of order the last few times i went to it

sceptre

Originally posted by Saruman
sceptre i dont think your example can account for this... you are bassically saying that a company with more than one branch even if each branch is independantly owned, if they have the same prices then thats price fixing?

Badly worded example by me. It's more a local area control thing.

Saruman

Unless its gone up, i think the statoil in palmerstown here charges less than €6 for the top car wash. Then again it charges 90.9c (91c really) a litre of petrol and all the garages in finglas are 79.3 (shell & Tesco) or 79.9 (statoil) so there are huge variations in price in petrol stations.

PWEI

I was about to open a topic about Statoil petrols prices when I saw this.On the way home last night and went in to a Statoil Petrol station beside the Santry Omniplex and petrol was only 87.9 a litre. Then drove about a mile and half down the road and there was another Statoil station but this one was charging 94.9 a litre?
What's that all about!

dmeehan

in general, are petrol stations independently owned and operated franchises or are they branches of the parent company?



i suppose it varies between brands

Genghis

Statoil had a pricing strategy for petrol that went something like this: All petrol is sold to all Statoils, company or private owned for the same rate. In order to be competitive on a local basis, the local Statoil operator is mandated to charge the lowest price of all petrol stations within 1km of their store. There is a 'recommended sales price' for petrol, which all operators are expected to use. If you need to reduce your price below this recommended retail price to be competitive locally, then Statoil centrally refund you the difference.

In this way Statoil could promise 'the lowest priced petrol', but at the same time have Statoils in different areas selling at different prices.

AFAIK this practice was the subject of some 'price-fixing' type investigation, though I'm not sure if it reached a conclusion or not (and I may be wrong altogether).

You would probably find that except for certain items that are marketed centrally (such as the Fare Play meal deals), that a given store can charge whatever they like for other products, including car washes etc.

sceptre

Originally posted by dmeehan
in general, are petrol stations independently owned and operated franchises or are they branches of the parent company?

I suspect most of them are independently owned. I'll offer my ex-home town Mallow as an example that doesn't really prove anything beyone illustration. If I remember rightly the town has six petrol stations: one owned by the local small supermarket king, two (one Esso one Statoil) owned by Keary's of Cork (AFAIK one of these has been sold, at least the shop is now run with a different name over the door), two owned by local types excluding Bill Keary (one Statoil, one Texaco (AFAIK the Texaco has closed, it's been in a poor position since the by-pass was opened in 1985), one owned by the same people who run the Hurler's Cross station in Clare.

That's one reasonably large town with all stations independently owned as far as I know. Might be different in the cities, or like you said, depending on the brand. The difference for an oil company between owning a station and having a guy use their brand is a pittance I suspect with the only real risk that the guy will switch to another company.

Genghis

Mostly independently owned, and the trend is more towards more independent ownership. The oil companies don't want to get in to the increasingly complex business of managing a convenience store, they just want to sell their products. Shell are currently converting all their company outlets to independent owners, Statoil have typically franchised out their stores all along, though I think they retain a few company owned sites.

Esso have some independent franchisees, the rest they operate on a quasi-independent basis. By this I mean that they own the site, but their site manager is self-employed. He is given a budget for everything little thing, and is responsible for meeting targets for operating profit, staff cost, maintenance, theft, etc. He is paid a "salary" out of this budget, but his earnings are effectively subject to surplus /deficit on operating costs.

parsi

Originally posted by sceptre
I suspect most of them are independently owned. I'll offer my ex-home town Mallow as an example that doesn't really prove anything beyone illustration. If I remember rightly the town has six petrol stations: one owned by the local small supermarket king, two (one Esso one Statoil) owned by Keary's of Cork (AFAIK one of these has been sold, at least the shop is now run with a different name over the door), two owned by local types excluding Bill Keary (one Statoil, one Texaco (AFAIK the Texaco has closed, it's been in a poor position since the by-pass was opened in 1985), one owned by the same people who run the Hurler's Cross station in Clare.

When I started driving (1998) the two petrol stations in Mallow on the Limerick Road were the cheapest around - I used to fill up there . They are now the dearest and I would never use them. The Statoil in the Fairgreen in Limerick used be the cheapest but now is dearer..

.. what I don't get is this:
- petrol stations all charging the same price - AA brands it as price fixing,
- petrol stations selling at different prices : also classed as some sort of a ripoff.. if 2 stations are selling at different prices go to the cheapest one.. if they are all at the same price then maybe its because they dropped their prices to meet Mr. Low Cost ...