General Discussion

Whilst this subject doesn't affect me, it was a hot topic in the Lansdowne earlier today amongst my compadres, so I thought I'd share their thoughts with my dawlish.com friends. My drinking partners couldn't understand why it costs 132.9 per litre at Sainsburys, but a penny cheaper at the BP garage before the Matford roundabout and 2p cheaper at the Shell garage at Countess Wear. It makes no sense to them and it makes no sense to me. Anyone care to try to shed any light on this? By the way, this isn't a rant against Sainsbury per se, as I love their new branch!!! PS it was nice to see Peter sat in the corner at the Lansdowne, though I wish he'd show better manners and didn't belch quite so loudly and quite so often! Private joke...

I noticed this also, but it depends on the competition in the area, and as they have a Morrisons and Tescos within a few miles this could be the reason

Exactly, price depends on local competition, Sainsburys in Dawlish didn't need to keep low petrol prices after the initial opening discount as the only competiton is Marine Garage.
As long as their prices are similar then they are not competing. Initially Marine dropped his price to compete with Sainsburys but as Sainsburys put their prices up the price now it is almost the same as it was when Sainsburys opened.

Take it from one who knows there is no simple answer, the whole industry is just a total con. The government will not attempt to regulate it because 86% of the price you pay at the pump goes straight to them in duty.

You need to compare like with like here as there is no way your local indepedant has the same buying agreement as Sainsbury's. Compare Sainsbury Alphington with Dawlish and you should see about 2p difference. This will be based on the throughput of the site, the area pricing band (Dawlish is in the highest) and the delivery distance from the refinery/storage depot.

The best way to get cheaper fuel locally is not to buy locally if this makes sense Sainsbury Dawlish will only drop the price if people dont use them, having said that the same system could also apply to the main store goods as well.

Dont forget the quality of the product your buying aswell supermarket fuel usually contains more addativies etc and is at the bottom of the allowance for octane rating.

Ah yes, the Supermarket fuel conspiracy again. It is very easy to do a 'google' about supermarket petrol and opinion is divided, loads of people say they notice no difference when using supermarket petrol and many others say their car definately doesn't 'go' as well with fuel from Tesco, Sainsburys etc.. But as with all these things no-one has actually done any proper tests, I must admit the only difference I notice between supermarket petrol and Shell petrol is in my wallet.

Greenenergy supplies billions of litres of fuel a year in the UK to many petrol stations and Tesco and all those tankers fill up at the same tanks wherever they are going, there is no 'special' tank for the Tesco tankers, the reason Tesco is a customer is that Tesco is a shareholder!!. Hence I am sure Tesco can get a better deal as they own part of the company. On the Greenergy website all the fuel spec data is available.

The difference between Alphington and Dawlish is 4p a litre , yet they are bought for the same price , so everytime you fill up at Sainsburys Dawlish they are sticking two fingers up to you and ripping you off.

Marine Garage is 1p dearer. If you are driving from Dawlish and put the average fill in which is around 30 litres, it cost 30pence more to use Marine than sainsbury's but it will cost you more than this to drive to and from sainsburys. the same applies to the garage in starcross.

As for the standard of the petrol. I know someone who owns/supplies over 300 garages with Texaco, and he assures me the petrol in supermarkets is exactly the same as independant garages, usually coming from the same tanker.