Price fixing, no it's price matching.
That is the term used by Whyalla petrol retailers according to a Whyalla News source.
A letter to the editor this week revealed the truth behind Whyalla's high petrol prices, including the "24-hour price jump" revelation.
A former manager of one of Whyalla's big two outlets asked not to be named, and revealed that Whyalla petrol consumers foot the bill to keep prices down at other major sites.
"I was the manager of one of the large fuel outlets in this town and was and still am absolutely disgusted at how much the consumer is being ripped off in this city," he said.
He knew "consumers in Whyalla specifically were being charged too much".
The media and others questioning sky-rocketing petrol prices in recent months have been fed "babble" about output volumes, transport costs and geographical location, which our source has revealed is a "cop out".
When it comes to major petrol outlets, it appears that over-inflated Whyalla prices help to "prop up other sites in different areas that do get cheaper fuel to the consumer but don't have the volume turnover to warrant cheaper prices".
"So in reality, we as consumers are more than likely paying for other towns to get cheaper fuel prices who do have lower turnover volumes and higher site running costs (than Whyalla)," he said.
"This is the problem that comes from large companies having many sites state-wide, where they see profit, they maximise that to prop up sites losing money."
The Whyalla News has also discovered that most of our fuel deliveries are from Port Lincoln, whose unleaded price at the moment is almost 10 cents cheaper than ours.
We are also able to reveal that the big two stations "dictate" the prices around town, in a price-matching bid.
"The two major players only worry about each others prices," the letter said.
"They don't care about the small guys ... the turnover for these places would not come close to the two major players in this city.
"I guarantee that if one of the two major players dropped their fuel prices by four - five cents per litre, the rest would follow within 24 hours, without a doubt."
But what was the most horrifying revelation in this letter, was the "24 hour price jump".
Here, our source said he was instructed to raise fuel by up to eight cents per litre and leave it for 24 hours.
If the other "major outlets" followed suit, then the price would remain there.
If not, then the price would be returned to the previous day, even though a majority of the time deliveries had not changed in wholesale price.
Our source also revealed that staff at the service stations had been told to keep their mouths shut on prices, despite the fact they regularly tolerated abusive customers.
"The staff, including site managers, of these outlets have no control of the set prices at the pump, these factors are set by people you never see," the source said.
"Please be aware that abusing staff of these sites is unfair and unjustified."
Finally he said the only way to reduce our prices is a boycott.
"The only way to have a possible effect on the major outlets that are forcing up prices in this town is to totally boycott them - this also includes refraining from buying shop items."
Email a friend
Favourites
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Digg
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Reddit
Newsvine
LinkedIn
Kwoff
Twitter