New Petrol Discount Card

yulfie

Declaration - I am one of the directors behind Marmalade. I would like to cover some of the points that have been raised:-

The Marmalade fuel card scheme is an adaptation of a commercial fuel card system which collect payment by direct debit. Credit card payments are subject to a merchant charge levied on us by the credit card company. It is not viable to introduce payment by credit card - but it was a nice idea.

The charge to Marmalade members for a fuel card account is £3.99 (plus 75p for every additional card on that account) we are charging £6.00 for annual membership of Marmalade which gives additional benefits and discounts. We have access to fleet terms on tyres, servicing and other motoring related products and services, which we pass on to our members - further details at https://www.marmaladebenefits.co.uk

We know we will not be the best price all of the time but there are occasions where there is a benefit - motorways, trunk roads semi rural and rural areas as some of the comments have indicated. Last week the comparisons were favourable but we are now in a falling market, in a rising market the picture is different.


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lizl

Maybe a dumb question but can you use this card at any Texaco garage etc as when I went onto their site it lists garages. why list garages if all stations accept the card.

At the moment Tesco and Asda are my best deal at 95.9 and Texaco are getting few and far between as they seem to be being taken over by Maxol

southeastshopper

I recently changed to getting gas through Southern Electric, and they've sent me a "moneysavers" card that gives you free access to their website - https://www.lifestylerewards.co.uk

On here, you can buy vouchers for Sainsburys and Asda at 4% and 5% discount. So using those vouchers to buy petrol (I know that's OK at Sainsbury, not sure at Asda yet) gives about 3p off the current price of 91.9p in my local Swindon store taking it down to about 88.2p (and of course you buy the vouchers with credit card for a little extra cashback)

They do other high street stores too, notably Kingfisher (Woolies, B&Q, Comet) vouchers at 10% discount of face value. Quite a handy perk, and it may even be worth migrating to Southern Electric for a few low-usage summer months to get this even if other energy suppliers beat them on raw price.

I imagine schemes like this are the source of all those slightly discounted £100 vouchers for Next/Argos/etc. that you see on ebay all the time.

As it happens, the same scheme also does supposed discounts on car servicing as well (they say up to 40%) so overall it's quite a similar thing.

tigerlily

I live in Cornwall, pretty remote, and Petrol is 91.9p for unleaded at the moment, it hovers between 93,9p and the 91.9p, this is for a Jet garage. Esso are 95.9-97.9p. I used to use Tescos petrol but it was an abysmal mpg and my car lost its oomph!! (technical term!!lol) swapped back to jet and all is well again.......and now Tescos are more expensive than Jet.

scarey_man

Dalkirst wrote:

The other one like a previous poster is dearer than a Asda's near me which is 91p

Average price in Dumfries as 98.9, so card is 4.5p better.
If the price difference remains roughly the same I'll save £50/yr.

Glowboy

martinbliss wrote:

i just dont understand that on every other product there seems to be a price war going on, why not on petrol and diesel?!?!

i understand that the cost of crude oil is the highest its been and all that, but it still must be a minimal cost price for the actual retailer.

you would think though, that with the amount of different fuel retailers out there, they would be in competition with each other and if one large chain decided they wanted more custom they could drop there prices forcing others to do the same!

I work for an oil company - although not in retail. The fact is, profit margins on forecourt fuel are miniscule, probably fractions of a penny per litre. That gives little scope for undercutting, although as another poster suggested the retailers do make money from secondary sales such as confectionary and cigarettes. I read somewhere that there are fewer filling stations in the UK now than in 1914; whether it's true I don't know but certainly some towns now have almost no stations other than at the supermarkets. The smaller companies like Murco, Jet and Q8 are usually the first to be forced out but sometimes even the big players can't compete with Tesco et al.

Price variations are driven by local competition to some extent but also by variations in cost, particularly delivering the fuel to the site. Retailers have exchange agreements in place so that petrol stations are often supplied from the nearest refinery rather than the parent company's, to reduce transportation costs and allow greater flexibility in supply. (This is one reason why premium fuels are more expensive: they can't be exchanged for another company's equivalent. On the other hand supermarkets often sell slightly lower grades of fuel with fewer additives etc because these are cheaper to source. Their selling point is price not quality.) The implication of this is that if you're an oil company it doesn't matter so much whose forecourt the petrol is sold at, money is made in other parts of the supply chain.

Say everyone decided to boycott BP. They would be left with fuel in the tanks at the forecourts but most of their stock is in refineries and depots so they would simply sell this to other companies further back up the chain, rather than to motorists. (Though I must confess I won't buy petrol from Esso because of their stance on global warming.)

So, in answer to your main question, there's very limited potential for a price war.

Hope I haven't sent too many people to sleep.

scarey_man

Glowboy wrote:

On the other hand supermarkets often sell slightly lower grades of fuel with fewer additives etc because these are cheaper to source. Their selling point is price not quality.)

That is so correct. If I fuel up from Esso, I get an additional 6% mpg for only an additional 1p/litre as opposed to filling up from Tesco.

gromituk

I'd like to see some proof of this. All I ever hear is hearsay. Unless you don't know where you've filled up, you won't be able to make a valid comparison, because it is not a blind test.

scarey_man

gromituk wrote:

I'd like to see some proof of this. All I ever hear is hearsay. Unless you don't know where you've filled up, you won't be able to make a valid comparison, because it is not a blind test.

I have conclusive proof, as my car shows me the mpg.
I travel the same roads day in, day out.
If I fill up (full tank) with tesco I get around 47-49mpg.
If I fill up with ESSO diesel, I get 55 and somtimes 59 mpg.

I know a large number of folk who have noticed the same thing.

Tesco fuel is 2nd rate, watered down.

judderman62

scarey_man wrote:

I have conclusive proof, as my car shows me the mpg.
I travel the same roads day in, day out.
If I fill up (full tank) with tesco I get around 47-49mpg.
If I fill up with ESSO diesel, I get 55 and somtimes 59 mpg.

I know a large number of folk who have noticed the same thing.

Tesco fuel is 2nd rate, watered down.

To me there is no question that Supermarket fuel is inferior.

I have only used it 2 maybe 3 times each time I can actually feel the difference in (as someone put it above) the oomph in my car and also whereas my rev counter moves smoothly with petrol bought from the Shell garage at the end of my street , when I bought from a certain supermarket chain (more reason not to buy one's petrol there) the rev counter moved very jerkily (bit like the thing of being able to spot a genuine Rolex from a fake - before the fakers cracked that last giveaway and got the second hand sweeping smoothly)