It’s Valentine’s Day and you’d think I’d be writing about my adoring and everlasting love for Wanda, just like I did last year.
But I’m not because regardless of Valentine’s Day, the world goes on. And I’m a cranky codger with a serious bee on my bonnet.
It’s because I’m convinced some of our bowser operators are not so much bothered by how much fuel they’re selling.
Instead, the rotten sods are sniffing it, and like any addiction it’s making them greedy – for more money, more fuel to sniff, and more insanity.
Driving through Logan along Kingston Road the other day, I was intending to do a spot of shopping. But out of curiosity, I drove further.
In one area, I saw E10 petrol for 162.9 cents a litre. Comparatively speaking, not a bad price.
E10’s the one with the recyclable stuff in it that people on the internet say makes your motor go funny, clogs up your fuel filters and registers your car unroadworthy if you use enough of it.
I’m no expert, but I don’t think I’ll be doing enough driving to bother the seals on my watcha-ma-hoosit, or whatever else sits beneath the bonnet that will only ever be opened by my mechanic.
He’s nearly retired, but he’s never ripped me off a cent over the years. Sure he hasn’t. He earned that $100,000 Jaguar fair and square. Paid for it in blood, sweat and tears, he did.
I know there’s petrol without the ethanol, but let’s look at this exercise as an apples vs apples argument and focus on just one type.
After all, this isn’t a story about ethics and science. It’s about dollars and common darn sense.
That same day, I drove from the Underwood end of that very long street, right through to the Beenleigh end, and I saw variations in price up to 45 cents.
Tell me how one 7-Eleven bowser within a couple of kilometres of another service station bearing the same name can be almost 40 cents more expensive.
Conversely, how can one be 40 cents cheaper and still turn a profit?
And why are suburbs with independent fuel stations so much cheaper than those only hosting the big guns such as Shell, BP and Caltex?
I’m frugal with my fuel. I’ve said before that I’m willing to fill up $20 at a time if I think it means I’ll get a few cents off later in the week.
It confuses me when I see someone filling up at a station charging $2.07 per litre when three doors down there’s a perfectly good bowser charging $1.69 per litre.
I’d say each to their own and not my problem. But it is my problem. These people who’ve more money than brains are sending a message to the expensive operator that it’s okay to price gouge – if that’s what they’re doing.
And where are the regulators?
The ACCC has a chairperson Gina Cass-Gottlieb, who sits alongside a couple of deputies and four further commissioners being told by oil conglomerates that fuel prices are cyclical.
For the record, it’s the petrol retailers who’ve decided that this whole cycle thing is a good idea. Wouldn’t want consumers getting too comfortable, right? We might actually notice when, and by how much, petrol prices are rising.
Meanwhile, regulators shrug their shoulders, tell us the prices are within acceptable limits, sip their latte and bite a triangle of egg and lettuce sandwich.
I’ll lay it on the line, because I’m about to reach for a paper bag to manage my hyperventilation: A 40-cent variation in petrol prices in the same street isn’t acceptable.
Someone’s decided it’s okay – at a certain time of the week – to bump profits by 20%.
“Why don’t you just fill up at the cheap end of the cycle like everyone else, Whiney? There’s an app that tells you these things,” I hear you say.
It’s true, I didn’t have to drive the full length of the street. I could have looked it all up on an app and saved the fuel. I could have. Yes, I could have.
Wanda, you know how you told me to always think things through before I get all wound up? Happy Valentine’s Day, darling. I love you.
