Name Your Own Gas Prices

from the stop-the-madness dept

Fri, Feb 25th 2000 12:09pm — Mike Masnick

Okay, I think this might be going a little too far. I'll admit that gas prices in the US are much higher than normal right now, but hearing that Priceline is going to start offering name your own gasoline price services just sounds silly. I'm also not sure how the gas stations will be equipped to handle this. While I definitely would like lower gas prices, I'm also not sure that I'll want to log in and bid on gas prices before I go fill up.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

2 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Glenn, 28 Feb 2000 @ 5:13pm

Name the Gas Price
I started thinking about it too, but the way the announcement was worded made me think you were pre-paying a set amount of gas for a month - not unlike what the car-rental companies are doing now. And so if I bid 10 cents below current prices, I run two risks: 1) that gas prices don't go down in the near future and undercut the price I paid and 2) that I will actually use all of this gas. I wonder if they'll have a gallon limit on it... imagine airlines using this to hedge gas prices?? :-)

And as for delivery, I was also thinking that this could be delivered in two ways right now -- Mobil's one pass or any gas station specific credit card. The latter option is sort-of how Blockbuster's Gift Cards work now -- they act like prepaid credit cards.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Skippy, 13 Aug 2006 @ 10:12am

Name your gas price
The shame is that this program went away. I saved a ton of money using Priceline's service for gas at stations that were very close to my home, and even at places I traveled to. What wouldn't I get to lock in prices now!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]