10,000 Angry Credit Card Holders Deluge Exxon With Plastic

Customers have sent back about 10,000 service station credit cards to Exxon Corp. as part of an apparently widening nationwide protest of the company’s handling of the huge oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

The returned cards represent only one-seventh of 1% of Exxon’s 7 million credit cards, but the oil company issued statements expressing concern. A number of environmental groups, claiming that Exxon’s cleanup efforts have been lackluster, have asked consumers to boycott the company’s products in the wake of the massive March 24 spill, when the Exxon Valdez went aground and more than 10 million gallons of crude oozed into the water.

Meanwhile, 16 Democratic California lawmakers Monday joined legislators in at least six other states in urging a boycott of Exxon products.

Among the other groups organizing boycotts is Citizens for Environmental Responsibility, a non-profit group that has placed a newspaper ad asking consumers to cut their Exxon cards in two and mail them to an office in Los Gatos. For those who do not own Exxon cards, the ad carries a checkoff box that can be used to pledge support for the boycott.

The organization has received 500 cards thus far, said Stephen Nissen, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for the group. Nissen said the cards would be forwarded to Exxon when more are gathered.

The boycott effort “is one of many brush fires that will grow into a forest fire,” Nissen said. “It’s going to take awhile for the impact to be felt--but it will be felt.”

Exxon officials have said there have been some “localized effects” on business at their service stations.

In Southern California, several Exxon station managers say they have not experienced a falloff in business. But they expressed concern about the possibility of a growing boycott movement.

Chuck Yee, owner of an Exxon station at the corner of Colorado and Eagle Rock boulevards in Eagle Rock, said many of his customers have questioned him about the spill and Exxon’s clean-up efforts.

“It’s not our fault,” he said. “I tell them we don’t have anything to do with the spill.”

Yee said he has tried to keep his customers by offering lower prices.

Likewise, Eytan Rosenberg, who operates an Exxon station at 307 N. La Brea in Los Angeles, said many of his customers have talked about mailing back their credit cards. But Rosenberg also said he hasn’t felt much of the impact of the protest yet.

“Our business hasn’t slowed down much because we’re in a busy area,” he said.

For its part, Exxon has taken out newspaper ads across the country to plead its case. The ads said a boycott would not clean up the spilled oil, and added: “But it is going to hurt a lot of small businessmen in your community--and their families and employees. They have nothing to do with the accident in Alaska, but they’re taking the brunt of the anger. And they stand to lose income at the same time.”

Of the 12,000 Exxon stations nationwide, only 5% are owned by the company. The rest are individually owned, or operated by independent dealers who own a group of stations, Exxon said.

In Sacramento, the group of 16 state lawmakers announced support for a nationwide consumer boycott of Exxon oil products. The Democratic legislators would join state legislators from New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Connecticut in calling for the boycott, planned for today.

“All Californians are outraged by the oil spill in Alaska,” Berkeley Assemblyman Tom Bates, an organizer of the boycott, said in a prepared statement. “We want to show Exxon that corporations who harm the environment will pay a price in the marketplace.”

Bates urged Exxon to roll back recent gas price increases, pay all cleanup costs, establish a $1-billion environmental trust fund and pay for safe tankers and spill contingency programs.

United Press International contributed to this report.