Filling up: round to nearest litre or nearest pound
Discussion
I've been wondering on this a while...
Fuel is always priced at decimals of a penny, i.e. 139.9p per litre, meaning that rounding must occur because I never have a 0.9p coin handy. The pessimist in me makes me think that this goes in the favour of the petrol station rather than the customer as rounding must occur.
So to avoid this, is it better to fill up to whole litre amounts or to amounts where all the .9's add up to a whole?
Fuel is always priced at decimals of a penny, i.e. 139.9p per litre, meaning that rounding must occur because I never have a 0.9p coin handy. The pessimist in me makes me think that this goes in the favour of the petrol station rather than the customer as rounding must occur.
So to avoid this, is it better to fill up to whole litre amounts or to amounts where all the .9's add up to a whole?
kambites said:
I suspect the more frequent trips to the petrol station due to not filling up would cost you rather more than the average 0.5p (that's about 4ml of petrol) that you'll save per fill.
This. Rounding can't be in favour of the station, it's rounding, if you should be charged £54.9949 then it'll be £54.99, if it measures £54.9950 then you'll be charged £55. Clearly half the timeiit'll round up and the other half down, over your driving career you've bought enough fuel to make a very stable average between rounding up and rounding down, so you've actually paid correctly much more accurately than the nearest penny per litre. See what I mean?
Not worth losing sleep over
You reckon? Given how tight regulation is on pump accuracy (and how harsh the penalties for being outside tolerance), and the above about it averaging out to the correct price over any reasonable number of fills, I always kinda assumed it would round 'properly' rather than up. The stations would have no argument at all against doing so, would they, except for 'we'd like to mildly overcharge in a way customers can't see'.
Big Rod said:
Or like my BiL who drives a 20 mile round trip to save 4p on a litre of diesel.
If we guesstimate 50mpg, giving a fuel cost of about 12.5p/mile, then so long as he puts more than 62.5 litres in, he's ahead. Assuming his time carries no value to him. Which, considering the kind of person who'd do that, is probably a fair bet...Oh, and another vote here for "just fill the damn thing". It's not like you won't be using it sooner or later.
TooMany2cvs said:
Big Rod said:
Or like my BiL who drives a 20 mile round trip to save 4p on a litre of diesel.
If we guesstimate 50mpg, giving a fuel cost of about 12.5p/mile, then so long as he puts more than 62.5 litres in, he's ahead. Assuming his time carries no value to him. Which, considering the kind of person who'd do that, is probably a fair bet...Oh, and another vote here for "just fill the damn thing". It's not like you won't be using it sooner or later.
Is it 20 miles round trip FURTHER than the other place though?
CHN said:
I still don't understand how in 2013 we still can't set how much we want to spend on fuel, put the pipe in and press go.
Eh? I have never failed to put the amount of fuel in that I originally wanted.Or do you mean without having to pull the trigger on the nozzle? Is that really much of a hardship?
oyster said:
CHN said:
I still don't understand how in 2013 we still can't set how much we want to spend on fuel, put the pipe in and press go.
Eh? I have never failed to put the amount of fuel in that I originally wanted.Or do you mean without having to pull the trigger on the nozzle? Is that really much of a hardship?
They had this in Greece when I was there and it makes a lot of sense as a lot of peoplefill up on price rather than amount.
E65Ross said:
TooMany2cvs said:
Big Rod said:
Or like my BiL who drives a 20 mile round trip to save 4p on a litre of diesel.
If we guesstimate 50mpg, giving a fuel cost of about 12.5p/mile, then so long as he puts more than 62.5 litres in, he's ahead. Assuming his time carries no value to him. Which, considering the kind of person who'd do that, is probably a fair bet...Oh, and another vote here for "just fill the damn thing". It's not like you won't be using it sooner or later.
Is it 20 miles round trip FURTHER than the other place though?
Just seems daft in my book and it's not because he's skint either.
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