I know someone who avoids their local petrol station that is 10p/litre cheaper than most others nearby (within a mile or so) as they think the cheaper fuel must be lower quality. There are weird status things going on with purchases like this.

Only the other day my father refused to buy some branded paracetamol because it was ~5 times more expensive than the local pharmacy brand that was out of stock. (£2.25 vs £0.49 for 16 500mg tablets.) I'd usually agree with him but he was out of paracetamol and has been advised by his doctor to take 2x500mg a day and there was no viable nearby alternative.

A digression but for that generation (those born in 1940s/50s) that grew up with rationing I think it is hardwired into their brain to try and minimise the cost of so many things, but with lots of random exceptions. Later on that day he ordered an extra drink but decided he was too full once it had arrived so he left it. So he was worried about spending an extra £1.76 on paracetamol but not about spending £7 on a pint he didn't drink.

Many people decide what petrol station to use based on simply how close it is, what kind of shop is attached to it (and the bits of British snobbery around that), whether it also sells whatever else they want (bread, milk, beer, etc), or even whether it is easy to drive in and out of.

"An inch of time is worth an inch of gold, but it is hard to buy one inch of time with one inch of gold"

Which always says to me that its not worth it just use the quickest option

Take the example drcongo posted:

"Yesterday I had to drive to a nearby town, just 20 minutes away, and noticed that every single petrol station there was a good 5p per litre cheaper than my town. I might plug this into a map."

Assume he uses 30 litres a week (high end of average UK usage) that's £1.50 per week saving but assume the extra miles use half a litre, that takes about 65 p off the saving (ill not go into wear and tear) over 30 years of work 50 weeks a year this means a saving of £1,275 over 30 years ... sounds a lot but

20 mins away - this assumes 40 minutes per week over 50 weeks is 2000 minutes, and over 30 years 60000 minutes. Now assume you are awake for 16 hours a day this equates to 62.5 days of free time - more than two months of awake time

so as the saying goes... which would you prefer £1,275 saving or 62.5 days of time

https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/

Nice to see the UK come onboard.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-fore...

So looks as though the requirement to report was only just introduced, hence the considerable missing data.

Edit: BBC reporting here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp80dpzdg37o

https://www.developer.fuel-finder.service.gov.uk/apis-ifr/in...

It doesn't mention any filters beyond batch number and effective start date. They're definitely storing the lat-lon information though, so it would be nice to do area-based queries, especially if you're building an app with a map view.

Preview:

https://bf31ed2a-ec85-460a-a503-fa9bf86bf63b.paged.net/

Source:

https://github.com/markwylde/uk-fuel-price-map

You have to download the CSV manually from the gov.uk link.

If you live on the Irish border, you'll have a choice between getting your petrol on the UK side, or the Irish side. For about 20 years, petrol was cheaper on the Irish side, causing a bunch of petrol stations to spring up just over the border, attracting drivers from the other side with cheap prices and good exchange rates.

In the last 10 years or so, the position has reversed. Petrol is now roughly cheaper on the UK side of the border, or at least not worth making a special trip for.

There's even a petrol station in Belleek mentioned here[1] that straddles the border and apparently has or had pumps on both sides.

[1]: https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/25653110.border-filli...

In the US gasoline short distance price variations are ridiculous. I've seen it where one station was $3.50/gal and another station on the same main road just a 30 second drive away was $4.30/gal. These two stations almost always have a large difference like that. This kind of large difference over a small distance is common all over the country.

Yet a surprisingly large number of people will always choose the more expensive station, even if they know about both of them (and the other stations with prices consistently in between that are also about equally close). There's nothing about the layout of the town and traffic patterns that make the expensive station more convenient, or make it easy to find. All these stations are about equally busy so it is not like the expensive one is faster. The less expensive one even has a way better convenience store.

This is one of the higher gas price states and people are constantly complaining about how much it costs to fill up, and when I ask complainers about where they buy gas it is often the expensive stations.

Many of them think that if they don't buy at the expensive station it will be bad for their car. Different brands add different detergents and additives that fight clogging and build up of deposits in your engine and fuel system.

However in 1995 the US got a federal standard that all gas has to meet, and then in 2004 several major car makers developed a standard they called "Top Tier" which is about 20 times more effective than the federal standard. Most major gas brands now sell only gas that is certified to meet the Top Tier standard.

Most testing has found that going for something beyond Top Tier doesn't really have a significant benefit for most people. For nearly everyone the best approach is:

(1) Avoid gas that is not at least Top Tier. Generally the only places that sell gas that isn't at least Top Tier are grocery store brands and maybe some convenience store brands. The savings with those brands is usually only a couple or so cents a gallon compared to the least expensive Top Tier brands (ARCO, Costco) and your car will perform better (including improved mpg) and need less maintenance.

(2) Buy the least expensive Top Tier or above gas that is convenient. You aren't going to notice any difference in performance or maintenance if you pay extra for some brand's particular proprietary blend.

Edit: after asking AI about this I would say the CSV is pretty useless as a comprehensive source of info on UK fuel prices.

(no comments there yet though!)

But they also need a little WebUI for stations to manually update prices, since small stations won't have a programmer on staff to do this stuff.

Here in Germany private corporations provide APIs for this. Google maps straight up tells you the price at nearby stations.

Maybe the UK government should focus on things such as their crumbling infrastructure, their almost non existent GDP growth or getting rid of their knife murderer and rapist population?

They certainly love spending taxpayer money on nothing don't they.