Fuel Shopper Dockets - Worth the Effort?
CarAdvice: Fuel Shopper Dockets Under Fire.
The ironic part of the system is that many motorists tend to spend more than they have to get the fuel-saving docket, and then travel past their local petrol station to fill up at a station which honours their docket. This usually results in more money being spent for a minuscule saving.
So true. We have covered fuel shopper dockets many times here at Oz Bargain Blog and at OzBargain.com.au. Every now and then you will get big mega retailers offering crazy deals that give you up to 20 cents a litre off, but usually with a catch written in tiny fonts attached to the footnotes. Personally I do not think the fuel dockets are on the way out though, as they are actually working as intended.
They were intended to build brand loyalty and bring more revenue to those mega retailers. In a greater or lesser degree, they have succeed with what they aimed to achieve, but not necessarily provide consumers any real saving at the end.
I for one do not bother to collect fuel dockets anymore. We do our grocery in Aldi these days, which is marginally cheaper than Coles and Woolies. I pump up my car mostly at BP because of the 5% cashback from the BP-Citibank Mastercard, although we usually have excessive Coles/Woolies fuel dockets from our non-driving friends. Most importantly, we just do not drive that much to warrant the effort to collect these dockets ourselves. 4 cents a litre only gives me maximum $2 saving for my old Nissan Pulsar (50 litre tank) — and that is every 3 weeks as that’s how frequent (or infrequent) we fill up the tank. $2 can be easily save by shopping at Aldi instead of Coles for 3 weeks…
Do you still collect fuel dockets? Do you think it is worth the effort?
I find the dockets worth the effort. I live in the country and drive a diesel landcruiser. We usually put in 100 litres or so when we fill up so the saving is worthwhile. We prefer Woolies and shopped there before we could redeem fuel dockets so it has not changed our grocery shopping behaviour. We do not go out of our way to fill up as the servo is at the main mall where we buy non-grocery items.
Tim — very valid point for those in the country. I guess I am only stating from my point of view, who live in the city inner suburbs, having all major supermarket within 2km, and can’t even clock 10,000km on my car each year…
I think it depends on how people are using it. One of my friend’s family use one docket to fill up three cars every couple of weeks. I didn’t know we were allowed to use the docket that way.
For me, however, who hasn’t got a family to raise, did very little grocery. I don’t use my car that much as well. Thus, the dockets aren’t really much of a use.
I agree, the dockets are a waste of time in my case. I travel lots and fill up my car every 2 days. Because I travel I pass many stations and even with the fuel discount I find other stations offering up to 15c off the Woolies/Coles stations normal prices, so I don’t bother at all anymore. Aldi is the go.
Or anyone except Woolies/Coles as they have 51% of the fuel market in this country now and 79% of the food market between them and I don’t agree that this should ever be the case. They are just going to buy out all the struggling (or wipe them out) independents (both food and fuel) if this keeps up. I have just launched http://www.wutca.com for those wanting to join the revolution!
Mick.