'Are things stable enough...that I don't have to worry?'

摘要

This time of year is generally dominated by oil dealers beating each other up over prices that cause an irreversible slide towards short-term logic (keeping cus- tomer count high) and long-term illogic (teaching customers that they can get oil at REALLY low prices). The craziest part is that while complaining about what the "other guy" is doing to steal my customers, oil dealers feel that they have no choice but to follow suit and do the same thing. If there was a recipe to shrink margins and promote customer disloyalty, a good number of today's heating oil dealers would be spokesmen for it.