I have just watched George Clooney’s Syriana tonight. Sorry my blogging has been slow this week — blame the Bigpond Movies free trial! I am going to watch X-men 3 tomorrow night, so finger crossed having time to summarise this week’s bargains.

Syriana took an interesting multi-storyline approach and the message is actually quite political around the oil industry. Oh wait, I don’t write movie review here. However what Syriana reminded me is, that I need to blog about IGA’s fuel deal! From this page at IGA’s website,

Australia’s Best Fuel Deal

The Fuel offer through IGA is now available to IGA customers EVERY DAY! (Includes NSW, Qld, and Selected stores in South Australia and Victoria)

There has been a lot of publicity lately about fuel discounts. There is no doubt that every Australian family is interested in saving money. At IGA, we thought we would make it easier for you. Our invitation is simple:

1. Go fill up your family car at any service station
2. Come and shop with us at a participating IGA store any day and spend $30.00
3. Bring in your fuel receipt
4. We will reimburse you 4c a litre on your petrol receipt.

What is unique about IGA’s fuel deal is — it claims to be Australia’s BEST Fuel Deal! However, you only get discount cashback when you reimburse it at IGA after you have paid for the petrol. You are allowed to pump on any petrol station though.

That means, you can potentially pump at either Shell or Caltex, getting maximum 8 cents per litre discount from Coles or Woolworth, and you can get further 4 cents per litre discount from IGA if you spend $30 or more there — making a total 12 cents / litre saving. There is no such restriction in their terms and services.

Or even better, get 10% off petrol at BP using BP-Citibank Mastercard, and then get another 4 cents per litre from IGA! Judging from $1.40+ petrol price currently, you can get maximum 18 cents / litre off with the above combination! Yes, you still need to pay $1.20 which sucks compare to 3 years ago. But it is quite a bit of saving.

However, it is actually expensive to shop at IGA. Coles, Woolworth, Franklins or Aldi are much cheaper. You might get at most $2.40 (80 litres) reimbursed back when you spend $30 on grocery, but they probably would cost only $25 in other shops. There is one IGA close to us in Kingsford, Sydney, and only poor university students shop there because they don’t have cars. Then if you don’t have cars, fuel discount deals are pretty useless, aren’t they?

Best fuel deal? Maybe not.