petrol stations are ripping us all off!

[Garry Spice]

now i saw a fb post last week with a bloke whos put just one litre of fuel in his car and the price wasnt the same as the adverstied price,in fact it was one pence more...

now this morning i thought id give this a go at asda in sittingbourne...
the price per litre as shown on the big board was £123.7p but after careful pump control i had one litre of diesel only to be charged £1.24p...
shouldnt it be rounded down not up?
could i ask for my .7p change?
rant rant rant....

[Andyp]

Think a general rule for rounding up/down is <.5 round down, >.5 round up .5 is usually rounded up

[mattr]

Wasn't this basically cos the dipstick had 1 and a bit litres of fuel (less than would show as 1.01) which is enough to trigger the pump to roll over to the next whole penny.

[DCM]

I didn't even know you could buy 1 liter of petrol, I thought the minimum was more than that..... Still things must be tight if you are worrying about 0.3p....... And I bet they round up never down.

[Dr Fly]

its an interesting point, but you are probably not losing 0.3p on every liter, you are losing it on the entire transaction.

Measurement is not an exact science. So every form of measuring anything will have some sort of accuracy tolerance. What it is for petrol pump meters is anybodies guess. but i am guessing they will internally calculate the cost based on their measurement of the fuel served, which could be to a higher precision than what you see on the screen, and then round it to the nearest penny. So you may be getting 1.004 liters, but only see 1.00 on the screen.

Its also worth mentioning, that the measurement of fuel is quite heavily regulated by trading standards, and checked often.

Its also a valid point that most petrol stations have a minimum fuel amount, this could actually be linked to the accuracy standard checked by trading standards, such as under the 2 liter minimum service, the accuracy cannot be guaranteed, so they get round this by making you buy more than two liters.

But honestly, 0.3p. is that the most pressing topic on your mind. you need a hobby or something.

[vrooom]

Don't to account for temperature expansion in liquid.

[SlowOne]

0.3p is an error of 0.02%. For every 1degC change in temperature the volume of fuel you get varies by .125%. So, if your fuel is at 15degC and then the next time you go it is at 16degC, you will get 0.125% less volume of fuel. In other words, the weather is making the amount you get 60 times a bigger error than the price you pay.

There's a campaign in some US states to get volume compensation made Law for fuel pumps. When Trading Standards measure they correct the amount back to the volume at 15degC to check that the pump is delivering the right amount of fuel.

Petrol stations aren't ripping you off, the weather is doing it 60 times more!! Sorry, to let facts get in the way of your sensational headline. :)

[bodgit]

Your having a go at the wrong people. Its the government who are ripping you off.
61% tax for every litre of petrol
59% for diesel
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/10668970/British-fuel-tax-highest-in-Europe.html

And they get this for doing sfa. Then they tax the profit of the station the staff, the delivery driver and the oil companies. I remember last year seeing somewhere abroad was only paying about 12p a gallon
Latest worldwide prices http://www.mytravelcost.com/petrol-prices/

[sparkyboy22]

.3p is just rounding. Stick exactly 10L in then see what it says.