Today, I need to order heating oil. The process of purchasing heating oil is a bit like watching my wife go shopping for underwear.
She'll start in one shop, go to the next, followed by another, followed by a lengthy debate over an unbelievably expensive cup of coffee as to which piece of cheesewire was the most attractive/best price and so on, before heading back to the first shop and purchasing the first pair of knickers she picked up.
To buy heating oil, I invariably ring up the local supplier and ask them what price they will give me on a thousand litres of heating oil, and what their delivery schedule is like. I'll then ring another supplier, and another supplier, and another supplier until I find a price I like, then call my local supplier back up. They invariably offer to beat the best price I gave them by half a penny a litre and promise to deliver by that afternoon.
This process of bartering usually saves me a few quid on my next oil delivery and I've often wondered why I don't just ring up the first supplier, make up a sort-of-realistic price and get them to beat it, therefore saving me time on phone calls, but as I sat in a traffic jam caused by people queuing for petrol yesterday, an idea occurred to me.
As a nation, we appear to have gone in to meltdown over an impending fuel shortage, which doesn't - as I write - actually exist. Petrol is still in plentiful supply, with the only backlog that actually exists having been created by an inept government and panic buying motorists as retailers have a bumper week. Sales are reportedly up 170% for unleaded as car owners and those wishing to mow their lawns this weekend desperately fill their tanks and jerrycans to the brim and, as a result, prices are rising. It's like a summer's day in a pub for them, with their 'beer garden' over flowing with eager punters - only we publicans would be lynched if we even thought about putting up the price of beer just because the pub was busy...
One station I drove by yesterday had pushed diesel up to 152.9p a litre and cars were literally queuing on to the busy main road to get some.
The horrible fact of the matter is that, when this is over, prices won't come down. Retailers will drop to 150.9 and we'll all think this is cheap!
But what if we were to buy our fuel in the same way we buy heating oil? Or my wife buys undergarments? She also has a habit of coming home and saying, "oh, by the way, the car needs filling up..." This usually means the orange light has been on for the last two days and the car is running on only a memory of fuel.
At that point, I could pick up the phone and start ringing around local petrol stations to negotiate a price on unleaded. Once agreed, I can head out to the one who's offered me the best price and fill up. If such a bartering system existed on a national scale, retailers and oil companies would be forced to become more competitive in their pricing as we, the consumer, start to set the price we're prepared to pay for fuel rather than them.
And what about people out on the road when the fuel light comes on? Naturally, there'll always be an "at the pump" price, as there is at your local heating oil depot, but many of us have smartphones and mobile Internet devices. I wouldn't be averse to pulling over in a layby and searching around for a supplier if it saved a few quid.
Surely there's an app for that...?