Petrol prices

Stonk

What is the point of pricing petrol in tenths of a penny, when the price is always something point 9 ?!!

And if your bill comes out as 28 pounds 37.6 pee, do they round it up? I shall work it out next time, and if I find they are then I shall demand my 0.4 pee change.

Grrraaaa, I'm annoyed about it already, and I don't even know if it's true yet.

Wig

Yes they do round it up or down, depending on which side of .5 it actually is if you know what I mean. But unless you have a calculator you aren't going to be able to work it out. I expect they are allowed to round up or down to the nearest penny.

I agree with you it is annoying they price at xx.9 sometimes you do see xx.7 but not very often. In France you get on all the petrol stations prices like 101.57, 101.78, actually in France it's written 101,57 101,78 99,08 etc etc you get the picture.

One of my desires if I win the lottery is to open a new type of petrol station, totally unmanned, 24/7, pay@pump (ofcourse), with a loyalty card scheme whereby you get 2p per litre discount or 3p, 4p 5p depending how much it takes to get customers to sit up and take notice.

IvanOpinion

I don't know if it is still true but it used to be that petrol pumps only had to record within 5% (or similar) to be considered 'accurate'. Therefore unscrupulous garage owners could almost get an additional gallion for every 20 or so gallons they sold. It makes the 'points-of-penny' look even more silly.

ivan

Stonk

One of my desires if I win the lottery is to open a new type of petrol station, totally unmanned, 24/7, pay@pump (ofcourse), with a loyalty card scheme whereby you get 2p per litre discount or 3p, 4p 5p depending how much it takes to get customers to sit up and take notice.

This sounds like something Stelios might do: easyFuel. OK - if that actually happens now, I want some royalties!

Stonk

I don't know if it is still true but it used to be that petrol pumps only had to record within 5% (or similar) to be considered 'accurate'.

Thankfully it appears to be 0.5% now, for most practical purposes (I found it surprisingly difficult to find this information on the internet). It's not quite that simple, in that if you only dispense a couple of litres then it is allowed to be a bit further off.

Zippy123

Tesco round up in all cases I have just checked a dozen or so receipts from last month. If it is £26.141 they will round up to £26.15. This seems a bit unfair, I would expect a round up or down to the nearest penny - not always a round up!

RedOnRed

I'm more annoyed about the price of diesel right now.

Why on earth should it be around £0.05 a litre more then petrol when we all know that diesel can be synthetically made?

I could walk down my local chippy right now, get some old fat off them, strain it and add a few basic chemicals and i'd have a perfectly useable diesel substitute.

That being the case then diesel should be the cheapest and most eco friendly option and shouldn't be liable to all this price per barrel rubbish.

Stonk

Ah, but you're forgetting that virtually the entire price of fuel has nothing whatsoever to do with the cost of producing it. It's all tax, tax and more tax.

It annoys me when fuel companies use increases in the cost of oil to justify increasing pump prices. Sure, it increases the price of the tiny portion that is the actual cost of the fuel, but it doesn't increase the tax portion. The rise in pump prices should be much much less that the corresponding rise in oil price.

Stonk

Tesco round up in all cases I have just checked a dozen or so receipts from last month. If it is £26.141 they will round up to £26.15. This seems a bit unfair, I would expect a round up or down to the nearest penny - not always a round up!

Retail motor fuel sales in 2004 were 28.2 million tonnes (The Times). If all the retailers apply the same rounding policy, and assuming an average fill-up of 30 litres (pure guess), then they are wrongly taking an extra £4.7million from consumers each year.

andy88_2

IvanOpinion wrote:

I don't know if it is still true but it used to be that petrol pumps only had to record within 5% (or similar) to be considered 'accurate'. Therefore unscrupulous garage owners could almost get an additional gallion for every 20 or so gallons they sold. It makes the 'points-of-penny' look even more silly.

ivan

I doubt if that was ever true; certainly not in the last 30-40 years anyway.

andy88_2

RedOnRed wrote:

I'm more annoyed about the price of diesel right now.

Why on earth should it be around £0.05 a litre more then petrol when we all know that diesel can be synthetically made?

I could walk down my local chippy right now, get some old fat off them, strain it and add a few basic chemicals and i'd have a perfectly useable diesel substitute.

That being the case then diesel should be the cheapest and most eco friendly option and shouldn't be liable to all this price per barrel rubbish.

Biodiesel has 20p/litre less duty than petro-diesel. There are still processing, transport, and other labour costs in commercial production.

But yes - making it yourself should cost about 40 to 50p per litre incl duty.