The goal of Imperfect Markets LLC is to make accurate and timely pricing information available to consumers. To that end, we created the site fuelwonk.com, which makes it easy to find prices for fuel used to heat homes, primarily propane and №2 heating oil.
In addition to revealing formerly inaccessible prices, Fuelwonk also provides comprehensive background information about the vendors. A detailed dossier is compiled for each vendor, including ratings, links to social networking sites and historical-pricing information.
The Internet has already solved the problem of “imperfect markets” for many industries. For example, we are all accustomed to quickly finding and comparing prices for hotels and airline tickets, which would have been impossible 20 years ago. Other, more entrenched closed markets, like pharmaceuticals, have recently been opened up by sites like GoodRX.
The market for heating oil and propane is still notoriously secretive, as vendor pricing information is generally not published. This is exactly the kind of problem that the Internet is supposed to solve. Fuelwonk promises to finally bring transparency to the heating fuels market.
Researching a vendor is often a time-consuming and frustrating task. You just don’t know who offers fair pricing.
Crowd sourced information provides current pricing for vendors close to your home or business. Fuelwonk stores and analyzes current and historical pricing to make intelligent vendor recommendations.
Choosing a vendor can often be the start of a multi-year relationship. We evaluate and compare the prices of vendors on a statistical basis over time, not just the price for today. We make seasonal suggestions about when to purchase fuel and when it is time to consider selecting a new vendor.
Fuelwonk does not buy, own, sell, or speculate in the markets for the products it analyzes. Fuelwonk does accept payments for promoted placement from fuel vendors. All promoted vendors are clearly labeled with the word “promoted”. We use these payments to defray operational and development expenses of the Fuelwonk web site. Our expertise is in analyzing and curating current and historical pricing data.
We track and compare pricing and vendor reviews using information provided by real customers and by the vendors themselves.