nsomos
Veteran Member
Posts: 140
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Authored by nsomos on Jul 16, 2014 18:18:30 GMT
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Bubba
Guest
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Authored by Bubba on Jul 16, 2014 20:29:35 GMT
It's an Australian site. It's already the 17th there.
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Authored by wayneborean on Jul 17, 2014 14:05:19 GMT
Interesting. Personally, I feel price gouging cases like this should require prison time. They never seem to learn. FYI, I used to work in an industry where meetings were always opened with words about avoiding anything which could be construed anti-competitive. Wayne madhatter.ca |
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Authored by wol on Jul 17, 2014 20:09:10 GMT
Not having read the article, but knowing a little bit about this sort of thing ...
You have to be VERY careful, as normal competitive market behaviour can, superficially, appear to be price fixing. The crucial factor is customer inertia.
In the UK market for sure, and probably many others, customers in the utility and banking sectors do NOT normally change suppliers. Which means that if a bank or utility company cuts its prices across-the-board to lure new customers, it's a sure fire way of losing a lot of money, very fast. On the other hand, raising prices won't lose them many customers. So the market rate tends to creep steadily upwards, held back only by special offers to tempt new customers.
Which is why, most politicians being lawyers, I despair at their ability to actually DO anything, because they so rarely understand the impact of what they do. Even worse, they tend to respond like Pavlov's dogs to the journalists, whose grasp of the issues (sorry Wayne) is usually even worse than theirs!
Cheers,
Wol
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