Our Pricing Policy

Over the weekend, I spoke with a few potential sellers all scattered around the world

And earlier today, I was able to put their price responses side by side,

And I wonder why one varied in price more than the other.

Seller #1 offered his Gasoil/Diesel/AGO at:

Current Mediterrean [Italy] Platt price - $662/mt

+ Premium in the amount of ------------ $ 45/mt

+ Shipping to Required Port X Freight - $ 30/mt

Total----------------------------------- $737/mt

While Seller #2 offered his at $480/mt Gross and $470/mt Net, again CIF; but a capped MOQ at 100,000 MT.

And Seller #3 offered his at $495/mt Gross and $475/mt Net, again a CIF deal, MOQ right about the same as the Seller #2's term.

I started to wonder how on earth Seller #1 had his price so sky high in comparison to others, but then the difference was as a result of the fact that Seller #1 used Med Platt while Seller #2 and #3 didnt. In fact, sellers #2 and #3 quoted fixed prices far below any Platt. Assuming I didn't bother to check with the other sellers, I'd probably not have known there were other better prices out there. Nevertheless, none of the sellers are wrong in their pricings, they are genuine sellers that just chose different routes and strategies that would eventually yield varying results. You will agree, genuine buyers and sellers are hard to come by, so we intend to keep our clients happy as much as possible; notwithstanding this, we believe our buyers deserve the best possible price in the world, while our sellers also deserve the best deal we can get them too, ...and, we intend to deliver on both grounds.

By the way, hard working brokers too deserve generous commissions as well, and we wish to deliver the highest possible, without overcharging our buyers. However, every buyer knows of tons of scams out there, one of which is, for instance, someone claims to have a product, offers a very low price and gets control of the L/C but never delivers; perhaps, these scammers 'rent' the L/Cs to others or borrow against them, ...who knows?

They seem to benefit in some way, by having control over innocent buyers' L/Cs. You can see series of ads on 'topix.com' which relate to this kind of scams. The result, as stated above, is that, the buyer never gets the product and a lot of time is wasted waiting for product which never arrives. Sometimes, costs are incurred in the process of arranging for the L/C, and the buyer loses hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. Brokers who expect a commission, invariably never see one and this apparently ends up to be a tragedy for all involved.

Therefore, our pricing policy is designed to eliminate these time wasting disappointments, for all involved. Every broker knows buyers who pretend that they have another seller. But later discover that there was never a competitor with real product. We must avoid being manipulated so easily by unscrupulous buyers.

First, note that target prices have no relevance to real market conditions nor real sellers; and for this reason, we do not entertain target prices. Target prices are pure fantasy and not based on real market price quotes. It is of no use to know the dreams of any buyer and we can't compete against the dreams of anyone. We do not compete against imaginary price quotes, because there is no limit to how low they can go. Buyers can even claim that someone is willing to give them the product for free, so $0 is not the limit of such ridiculous pricing. Someone can claim that another seller is paying them to take the product, as you can imagine. This is a game we don't wish to play; buyers who work brokers against phantom sellers will fail in this ploy, if they try it, with us!

So we have come up with the following policy because we want to deliver good prices to both buyers and brokers for real products:

1. The standard price is $xxx/mt for orders which meet the minimum of 12,500 mt/mo x 12 months or 150,000 mt/year; large orders can be sold for less;
2. In order to be competitive, we will get our chosen/preferred seller to reduce our price by $1/mt below that of our known competitor. So, we will match or beat any real competitor's price by $1/mt;
3. However, in order to get this lower price, the potential buyer must disclose to us, information about the known competitor, so that we may confirm his price and availability of product;
4. Once it has been proven that the alternative is a real seller, we will reduce our price, accordingly;
5. Verification of a competitor's price and availability of product is done by the broker closest to the buyer;
6. The alternate seller is contacted and several questions are asked;
7. Each broker in the chain must also confirm that the alternate seller is real, by the same means, all the way to the seller's broker;
8. Brokers in the chain should note the date and time they spoke with the alternate source and also the name of the person with whom he spoke;
9. We will verify the veracity of the competitor's bid, when the order is brought to us;
10. If the seller refuses to cooperate, then that seller is disqualified and the alternate price is rejected;
11. If it is confirmed that we are dealing with a real competitor who has real product, then we will reduce our price by $1/mt below that of our competitor, as earlier indicated;

Note: This process accomplishes two things:
1. It guarantees the buyer the lowest price in the world; and,
2. It guarantees the brokers the highest possible commission for the sale

There is no other way to fetch the best price for the buyer and the highest commission for the brokers; we are open to suggestions on ways to improve our pricing policy, to make it fairer or more competitive.

Please feel free to send us your comments. Thank you! :)

- Management