This seems insane to me. I live in a city where maybe 50-60% of people have cars, and most don’t drive them that much. Yet every grocery store I’m aware of with the sole exception of the expensive Whole Foods has a fuel rewards points program. Reasons this should be controversial enough to enable a low-cost alternative:
- Many people don’t drive and therefore pay a little more for groceries because it includes a perk they don’t use
- It seems like a very ardent pro-fossil fuel move that you’d think would cause some sort of negative attention from environment activists.
- The subsidy typically applies as an amount off per gallon, so you end up really subsidizing big vehicles with big gas tanks. Again, really makes some customers subsidize others and you’d think people (other than me) would be annoyed at this.
But yet, virtually every grocery store does this. Anyone know why? Does the fossil fuel industry somehow encourage this?
radix@lemmy.world 4 months ago
People are weird about gasoline. They’ll drive around looking for the cheapest option, to save 2 cents/gallon. Even with a huge tank, that’s less than 50 cents of total savings.
So a grocery store can offer, say, 10¢ savings, and it only actually costs them like $1.50-$2.00 per customer. That’s way less than other sales that are harder to advertise and don’t bring in the same amount of business.
Ultimately the psychological benefit for the shopper is more than the financial cost to the store. The others societal costs don’t come in to that equation.
wjrii@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Bless 'em for keeping the price pressure on, but this is so very true. Once I ran a couple of mental hypotheticals, I stopped giving a shit, beyond avoiding places right by airports that jack it up a dollar or more (Las Vegas and especially Orlando, with lots of tourists in rentals, are the worst offenders I’ve seen).
For a pretty extreme example consider, as you say, a large 25-gal tank, and filling up from dry twice a week, at an average of $0.10/gal non-optimal price: you pay an annual premium of $260 bucks not to drive yourself batty hunting for pennies, and burning at least a tiny bit more fuel to do it. Most people will pay far less. It’s just this weird thing that stuck in people’s brains long past the point where a cent increase was any significant percentage of the fuel purchase.
Kelly@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Since 2001 here in WA we have a system where petrol stations have to lock in their price for a day by announcing it the afternoon before. The highlights used to be mentioned on the local news and newspaper (maybe they still are, who knows?). But more importantly they all get published on www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au so its pretty trivial to visit the site in the afternoon and check the stores along the commute home, plus you can also compare their tomorrow price to see if you should wait until then.
Looking at that site right now I can see 25% variance across my commute without even considering a detour. Its a pretty handy system.