Don Towers benefits from being in the lovely South East Wales countryside. One of the downsides is that we're not connected to mains gas and so we heat our house using domestic heating oil.
The price of heating oil varies throughout the year in a pretty predicable seasonal manner, up in the winter, down in the summer although obviously there can be major fluctuations due to oil prices and/or the value of the pound against the dollar.
In the past we've tried to pick the market but the disadvantage of trying to do this is that sometimes you can run out of oil waiting for the price to go down (hasn't happened to us bu has happened to friends) or you can be forced into an emergency purchase at a very high rate. Now we've decided that we'll just get 500 or 1,000 litres in February and another 1,000 in July and not worry too much.
We placed the order two days ago for 2 week delivery but the tanker turned up today. I'm happy not to have to wait but when I asked the delivery driver why so soon, he said that there was simply no demand at the moment so he could deliver immediately. We paid about 7p (12%) a litre more than we did in the summer and the crude price was no higher so why did we have to pay a premium (to be fair it was 12p a litre less than it was at the peak last year) ?
We're skinflints so we rang around to get quotes and a few things struck me about this so-called market:
I think there is an agreement between suppliers to keep prices up. The OFT disagrees with me (see the article below) - now where's my tinfoil hat ? :tinfoil
http://ift.tt/1anTqvz
The price of heating oil varies throughout the year in a pretty predicable seasonal manner, up in the winter, down in the summer although obviously there can be major fluctuations due to oil prices and/or the value of the pound against the dollar.
In the past we've tried to pick the market but the disadvantage of trying to do this is that sometimes you can run out of oil waiting for the price to go down (hasn't happened to us bu has happened to friends) or you can be forced into an emergency purchase at a very high rate. Now we've decided that we'll just get 500 or 1,000 litres in February and another 1,000 in July and not worry too much.
We placed the order two days ago for 2 week delivery but the tanker turned up today. I'm happy not to have to wait but when I asked the delivery driver why so soon, he said that there was simply no demand at the moment so he could deliver immediately. We paid about 7p (12%) a litre more than we did in the summer and the crude price was no higher so why did we have to pay a premium (to be fair it was 12p a litre less than it was at the peak last year) ?
We're skinflints so we rang around to get quotes and a few things struck me about this so-called market:
- The calls to different companies all seemed to go through to the same switchboard
- Suppliers are very territorial. even though prices in England are nearly 6p a litre less, they either wouldn't deliver to us in Wales or wanted to charge us the Welsh rates even though it would add 10 miles max to their delivery distance
- Oil in England is much cheaper. We're not so remote that we need to pay a surcharge for delivery and I've got quotes for more remote addresses in England and Scotland which are cheaper
I think there is an agreement between suppliers to keep prices up. The OFT disagrees with me (see the article below) - now where's my tinfoil hat ? :tinfoil
http://ift.tt/1anTqvz
via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/1frbfYf
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