whats with the additional 3.5 cents off/ per litre sign?! :confused:

Its cool when that happens. :)

where did u see it?
petro canada?

if u have patro canada's card, u get an additional 3.5 cents off per liter, pretty good eh~! ;)

whats the purpose of that though?! why not just adjust the street sign prices?

maybe its to get around some sort of gas price agreement.. or something.. it requires no membership or anything.. just the pump price is 3.5 cents lower.. o well I don't mind hehe

I've seen that sign a a few Shell and Petro stations, only to see a lower price a little down the road at a station that has no such sign. I dont get it either....seems like a scam :rolleyes:

I really don't understand. I was venting to my firend.

First off, I knwo gas stations change their list price by receiving a phone call and they hvae 15 minutes to change the gas prices. However, Esso/Petro/Chevron/Husky all are giving 3.5cent/liter off of the 8x.x gas price. Does this make sense to me? Nope. You know wheny u pump gas and it shows a charge of where the gas prices go? 50% taxes, 20% crude charges, etc? Well, under profit it shows 1%. So, by reducing the 3.5cents off a liter of a 8x.x total, wouldn't they be in fact losing close to 4-5% and thus getting into debt? Unless of course these 3.5cent discounts are the governments idea. It makes sense if it says "when you buy a 1L coke, get 3.5cents off a liter" because they can make up for their loses in the gas prices with their retail store inside.

Its probably some underminding thing gas stations across from each other do to each other. They make the other one think they have the same price, but really one's cheaper than the other? :p

What they're trying to do is to make u think that you're getting a deal when you're actually NOT getting a deal.

Its probably to just get people accustomed to going to their gas stations so that most people would stay loyal. I find myself going to the same one all the time because its close by to my house and the price is always decent on sundays.

I'm in Richmond once a week, so I find myself getting gas there, on Cambie and Garden City. I like the fact that they fill it up for me, it makes the whole task much easier! I'm usually at the mercy of gas prices, I fill up often enough that I take whatever's there - waiting isn't a luxury I'm offered!

whats with the additional 3.5 cents off/ per litre sign?! :confused:


You get the 3.5 cents per litre off when you use their credit card to pay for it. Not everybody pays their credit card balance off each month. And guess how much you have to pay in interest when you don't. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 19-29%.

who cares! we are the ones saving money so its all good :D
but yea i think its their way of trying to beat down other gas stations...3.5 cent is quite a bit when u fill in 40L...

gas price explanation i found from work:

Ok here it goes… (PS this comes straight from a top level exec at chevron…)

Welcome to the crazy world of gas pricing in Canada a.k.a conscious parallelism. Canadians have about zero brand loyalty when it comes to gasoline (Apparently this is quite different with our neighbours down south).

So to start we need to answer the question why are all the gas prices the same at every gas station in the city. Simple 4 stations on one interesection all wih different prices. So do you fill up at:
a) 79.9
b) 84.9
c) 89.9
d) 1 million dollars.

Pretty simple question everyone and their dog goes to fill up at 79.9. No one asked well, which one is (insert favorite gas company here)? As a result only 1 out of the 4 stations does any volume.

Solution everyone matches the price. Now all stations have the same price and the consumer can choose which ever they like better, has a shorter line-up or doesn't require the impossible left turn across the median.

So everytime one station lowers the price to attempt to get a price advantage all the attendants get on their phone and thell the higher ups located in their 31st floor offices downtown. Given a short time span 15min to 30min all prices are once again matched. Ever felt special by noticing "hey the dumbasses across the street have more expensive gas, who's gonna fill up there?" I know I have, every blue moon we notice the price difference known above.

So a more difficult question how do the prices go back up? The prices generally continue downwards until the gas companies begin to lose money… it is true they do lose their shirts at the lower spectrum of the gas prices. Don't shoot me for saying that. But more than 50% of the cost of gas is tax, yay government. So the next major contributor is the price of crude, cost of refining, shipping… etc. Most of the money is made in the convenient stores…lol, and large contracts like air canada. So back to the topic.

One company (generally a big one) will raise prices. Usually everyone is sweating and is happy to go back up to 95.9 and make some money again. Now you tricky guys out there thinking well what happens if one doesn't follow. Big company one gets pissed and drop the price like 5c below the previous low price to really piss everyone off (well not the consumers). We saw it last week, yay 75.4… I got my fill did you get yours. Next time they raise everyone follows… Unless it was 5-7 years ago and a company named ARCO was still around, (those were the prices wars where gas was 39.9 ah the good ole days). A whole nother story all together.

So now we have the background of our craZy gas prices in a nut shell. So the now simple million dollar question, 3.5c off at the pump?

So once upon a couple years ago non gas companies… aka safeway, costco, superstore… said I know lets attract customers into our stores by offering gas stations on site. Didn't work so well. Lightbulb… new idea… lets offer shoper a discount at the pump with receipt showing purchase from inside. Kinda worked… Now lets just say everyone with a membership card gets this discount and hopefully they will do some shopping too.. This is todays model.

So big companies like chevron, esso, and shell said ok… we can deal… lets lower our street price by 3.5c. But now the original problem exists. 4 gas staions. Chevron, esso, shell, and safeway. Respective prices are:

a) 79.9
b) 79.9
c) 79.9
d) 83.5 <- save 3.5 at the pump…. This is safeway.

But safeway goes well we can have higher gas prices then everyone else. So the prices become:

a) 79.9
b) 79.9
c) 79.9
d) 79.9 <- save 3.5 at the pump…. This is safeway.

Now all the big companies went ***? I think we have a problem. So drum roll the solution.

Every gas station puts a sign out front that says save 3.5c a litre of the street sign. No membership necessary.
Which bring us to today.

Did anyone notice the save 3.5c a litre signs at our local shell and chevron. (small print in red says no membership necessary).
And once again equillibrium is reached.

So… ps gas always goes up on Monday… it is kinda the unwritten rule… if we are lucky Tuesday but usually Monday when we are all late for work going sweet gas is 82.4 but I am late I will fill up on my way home.. WHAT… 95.9 shoulda filled up this morning!

Hopefully that all made sense, no way I am proof reading.

Whatever, it's dumb and annoys me, plus I *KNOW* I'm not actually getting a deal. Anyone notice that the numbers don't work out to the usual xx.9? I gassed up yesterday and it was 80.0 cents a liter. I bet if they didn't have the dumb sign they'd have been selling for 79.9. Yeah, OK, so it's really no different but I guess the extra .1 is to pay for the 3.5 cents off sign. :lol:

but SuperStore had the 3.5 cents off every litre thing ever since they had gas stations! it's SuperBucks and you can use it at their store. so now other companies are copying them...
it surprised me too. i filled at Petro, but it's not just pay by their credit card, i paid by cash....

They have been doing this in Calgary for the last year.

Superstore offers 7.0 cents a litre here in superbucks.

I don't understand why they don't just change the sign. They just inflate the price on the sign 3.5 cents and decrease it to the correct price at the pump... dumb asses.