Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello (Petrol)
Posted on 16th January 2008
Continuing the motoring theme, I recently discovered a newish site, PetrolPrices.com. It follows the comparison site idea, but for petrol (and other fuel types) at petrol stations and supermarkets, etc. across the UK. Although it hasn't been going for long, it does seem to have gained quite a bit of interest and is a worthy addition to your bookmarks.
The only annoying thing (for me persosnally) is that I had the idea to do this (as I'm sure several other did) several years ago when I first started developing websites :) However, I am surprised that no-one has developed this kind of site before, as it is a resource that has been wanted for a very long time. In my case I didn't develop my idea further, as I didn't know of a reliable way of getting at realtime data. Originally I was going to allow users to enter prices from their local filling station, but this is open to abuse, and considering that I wouldn't be able to verify the prices, would likely have been very unreliable. PetrolPrices.com have overcome this hurdle, thanks to Catalist. Although they existed back in 1998, my research never revealed them and I'm sure others had the same problem. With data for over 10,000 stations up and down the country they certainly have that data market sewn up.
I shall be using PetrolPrices.com from now on, but from initial searches it would seem that the price I'm paying currently is quite low. Although there are petrol stations that charge a lower price, the effort getting to/from them would probably negate a lot of the benefits of filling up at stations that are actually on my route to/from work. However, I see it being very useful when driving long distances, particularly when on holiday to find the cheapest and closest filling station.
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