As Knoxville gas prices start to ease, AAA wants answers, and not gobbledygook nonesensical answers.
AAA East Tennessee wants a sensible explanation from the greater oil and gasoline industry for why Knoxville became home to the highest fuel prices in the country over the weekend.
In a formal letter released late Monday, the regional auto club put the question to local retailers, wholesale distributors and others on behalf of Knoxville consumers, who suffered a peak average price of $4.77 per gallon Monday.
Based on credit card swipes at the pump, AAA found the nation’s second-highest price in Macon, Ga., where Monday’s prices averaged 16 cents less.
“Nobody can explain it,” Don Lindsey, spokesman for AAA East Tennessee, said Tuesday. “In the best of times, people are suspicious of gas prices. Now, it’s just horrifying how people feel about the industry.”
thousands of people have signed the petition for the TN legislature to investigate price gouging here knoxville. If you haven’t already signed, I suggest you do, as (OMG!) Stacey Campfield is dropping it off to the TN Attorney General’s office. (Stacey Campfield doing the right thing??? Is the sky falling?) And yesterday, Gov. Bredesen issued a statement and stated the state is sending out investigators.
“We are analyzing whether the spike in gasoline prices across Tennessee is the result of price gouging or a reasonable reaction to supply disruptions in the wake of Hurricane Ike,” Attorney General Cooper said. “We are concerned with the spike in gasoline prices in the state, and Knoxville, in particular, where gasoline prices are reported to be among the highest in the nation. There is a difference between profits and profiteering.”
The reason AAA East TN wants a cohesive answer, is that the Haslam corp has given us nothing but double talk, starting with, market forces, to for some reason other TN retailers got gas but not Knoxville. But Pilot had gas through this crisis, and still they raised their prices $1.50 per gallon. Whether the state will see it the same way as AAA, is a whole other story.
Bredesen wants you to still be vigilent of gas prices and report unusually high prices back to the state:
Consumers who believe they may have been charged unreasonably for a good, commodity or service should complete the online complaint form at http://www.state.tn.us/consumer/consCompFrm.html or call 1-800-342-8385 to report price gouging activities. Consumers are asked to provide as many details as possible including the station, location of the station, the price of the gas, and grade of the gas.
Campfield, believe it or not, is really a good guy. He agreed to help me get my petition to Nashville from the very beginning. He’s not the kind of politician that goes to work bringing only his own views on the issues. When you see him in the news with those kind of bizarre bills, that’s actually something he is doing for constituents and he takes the fall. But this was actually something that everyone agrees on and went against most of his party.
Why did some places like Weigel’s run out of gas when others like Pilot had it through the whole ordeal?
I think the better question is if there really was a shortage why didn’t the gas companies that had gas sell it to other local companies?
Nigel–
I’ve heard that it takes about 10 days for gas companies to get oil from refineries. Weigel’s ran out of gas because they didn’t have a bunch of gas stored up like others. They did however get gas eventually even though it took a while (but less than 10 days). Another thing to remember is that during those 7 or so days that Weigel’s didn’t have gas they didn’t make any money. You can’t make money off of gas you don’t have. I think that Weigel’s running out of gas is a good sign for the company because it shows that they had no suspicion or speculation about the shortage coming. Just a thought.
–Diego