CompSyn said:
It's not just Shell. The industry accepted length of time motor oil can be properly stored is somewhere between 3-to-5 years.
Industry standard. OK. Similar companies with similar objectives - sell more product & limit liability - which is irrefutable as this is the nature of business - telling us that 2 + 2 now = 4.5 because that is what is in
their best interest. If the automotive industry presents a unified front and tells us all that the radiators in our new 2013 model cars need to be replaced after 3 years or 36K miles then this becomes an industry standard. Doesn't make it true, now does it? And yet it becomes an accepted industry standard. And they don't have to collude; one company makes a move, the others see it as good for them too, and they all follow. As someone that does sales/marketing for a manufacturing company I can tell you that there is the shelf life that is advertised and there is the actual shelf life of a product. The two usually have little in common time-wise, and sometimes for good reason i.e. the manufacturer's inability to control the consumer's storage conditions. But most of the time it just goes back to my statement about the inherent objective of companies - their primary objective is to sell more product. Have you ever heard the CEO of any company tell his shareholders that they are planning to reduce the forecast because they just sold too much product last year? Uh, no. I live this every day; hence my well-founded skepticism.
