product, statisticsI don’t know if this is where I whould ask, but here goes.
I need to find a list of gas station addresses for the different gas companies here (ie. Shell, Gulf, etc) for an app that I’m working on. Most addresses are in internet business directories on the web, but there are some franchise owners that haven’t listed their station in this directory so the information will be incomplete.
The problem is that I don’t know how to ask for that information. If I tell them that it’s for an app and explain the idea, chances are they will steal the idea from me. So I’m looking for ideas on how to ask, say Shell, a listing of their stations.
Since I work at a multi-national company, maybe I can use the company I work for to get the info (ie. “I work in the transportation department at company and I need your list of addresses because…“)
Any help is appreciated.
Asking works, though keep in mind that oil companies usually run gas stations as franchises. That is, they don’t own all of the gas stations, so you might end up missing quite a few.
Don’t worry too much about leaking your app idea. You don’t need to say more than “I’m looking for a list of gas stations to build a mobile app.” Even if you end up leaking what the app is for, there’s positively zero chance a large company would move forward with it.
An alternative way to get this information without them knowing it would be to scrape a combination of yellow pages, business directories, and maps. It’s not trivial however, because such websites usually have pretty tough bot countermeasures. (Aside if you’ve a budget: reach out if you need help with the web scraping.)
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