The other day I worked out using PetrolSpy I was going past a cheaper petrol station and could save around 30 cents per litre. The detour was minimal so well worth the effort. Here's what PetrolSpy displayed.
However when I got to the 7 Eleven petrol station this is what I saw.
"Shop still open, fuel upgrade underway". As they say, "not happy Jan".
With PetrolSpy I've found a number of times the low priced petrol listed isn't correct so I like to have a second source to crosscheck the price. For example using the 7 Eleven Fuel app or the Woolworths Fuel app.
What was interesting is when I later checked the 7 Eleven website I found 7 Eleven had not updated the price of petrol for nearly two weeks.
So 7 Eleven was feeding bad information to the PetrolSpy app and since the PetrolSpy app was updating the information regularly was just putting when PetrolSpy updated the information (in this case about an hour ago). So PetrolSpy gave the impression the price had recently been submitted making it more credible, whereas the information posted by PetrolSpy was recent, the information was nearly two weeks old. PetrolSpy should be vetting the data they receive more carefully.
One of the problems obtaining cheap petrol is the apps are only as good as the information provided. Sometimes the apps receive poor information from the petrol companies (such as this case), sometimes the apps are slow at getting the latest information (I've seen this at a Woolworths Petrol station where the price was lower than PetrolSpy and Woolworths own app) and my biggest concern is users providing misleading information either in error (E10 being listed as unleaded) or for some agenda that I'm not aware of. To get around these situations I usually find it best to have a couple of options. In this case I went a Woolworths Petrol station further along my route and saved around $9-$10. This doesn't seem like a lot of money for the effort, but I'm happy to save money when I can, as long as I don't waste money (fuel and other costs) doing so.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.PetrolCostCalculator.com.au
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