Old PetrolPrices Service
The main benefit of the data from Experian Catalist is it’s accuracy because it’s based on fuel card transaction data by forecourt and fuel grade. But it does have faults, such as the time delay as most transactions are recorded 24-48 hours ago. Another problem is it won’t show prices from a station if no one has used a fuel card there and some stations don’t accept fuel cards. Members often feedback that the prices we show are wrong and this is the cause.
The cost of licensing the data is expensive, and this is why we tried to offer a paid subscription for an improved version called Plus. While some members accepted this, the vast majority considered the idea of paying for fuel information was wrong. This made us deeply reflect on what service we should provide for the future using market research conducted with members
Crowdsource Fuel App
PetrolPrices was inspired by apps across the world that have built a community of price spotters who submit fuel price information or reviews and in return earn points that can be spent on rewards. Gasbuddy, PriceSpy, Clever Tanken and Fuelio are examples of crowdsource driven fuel apps that do this to great effect.
The role of forecourts are changing, and as they evolve, drivers need to know about the availability of facilities at each station and customer reviews for stations will become ever more critical. The best way to collect this information from members, whether it be prices, reviews or facilities on a crowdsource fuel app, and this is what we have built for members.
How does it work?
What you will see change is that many of the links from emails or the website when browsing on mobile will direct users into the app. This is because most of the best information is on the app, plus its more secure, faster and enables the use of the app’s main functions on the forecourt. Some of you may already have received messages encouraging you to report fuel prices on the app when you are at a station, for instance.
To become a PetrolPrices Price spotter on the app, you must actively take part in reviewing or updating the prices of any stations you pass or visit, as well as updating the station’s page with details of the facilities and rating the overall experience.
In return, you will receive points. For example, for updating a price can earn you ten points, confirming a price gets you five points and if you confirm/update all four fuel grades for one station, you get an extra ten points. For reviews, you’ll get 10 points for each written review, but only one per station.
By continually reviewing stations, reporting prices and completing tasks within the app, you’ll climb our leaderboard and could soon be at the top. Extra points will also be given for giving us trustworthy, accurate information, using the app regularly, or putting your vehicle in the garage.
The more points you earn, the higher up the leaderboard you will climb. In the next major release, we will show you ways that you will be able to spend your points on various kinds of rewards, prizes and competitions.
How do we make money?
A new source of income will come from the information collected from usage of the app itself that we will charge petrol retailers to access a platform so that they can gain customer as well as operational insights into what is happening on their forecourts or competitor forecourts each day. Just to reassure you, this is completely anonymous and does not provide ANY personal information whatsoever, and we are not selling the data itself, ONLY access to a platform.
The final way we will make money is by charging brands a fee to provide our users with discounted and personalised rewards that will appear in email, website and app.
The three ways we make money mean that we can provide our service for free to members, where there is a clear value exchange that provides money saving benefits to members in exchange for anonymous usage information. This is all laid out in the terms and conditions here.
Of course, any member has the right not to agree to provide information, which is why we have created an unregistered version of the app so that the app works without personal information. Users can also download as well as delete their account with all the information in it at any point from the system.
What’s coming in the future?
To confirm, you don’t need to give us any information for the fuel service to work. It will still deliver fuel price information. But the more who take part and provide us with information to earn points and rewards, the better the service will be for the benefit of everyone else.
Those who do take part have a chance to convert their points earned into prizes or discounts on fuel, products and services in the forecourts.
If anyone has any feedback in relation to the new PetrolPrices then please feel free to comment below or send an email to support@petrolprices.com
Glad I looked in and discovered what you guys are doing as your excellent App develops. Yes I’ve complained but now the future looks bright.
I have not been receiving your emails lately but should like to go on receiving them.
I get some emails, but not the ones with price information!
I have the same problem re emails. I would like to receive them as well but don’t know why this has happened. I do get the newsletter however.
Does the app have to be on a phone or will it work on a laptop or tablet?
And does the laptop have to use the latest rubbish version of Windows or will it work on “good old reliable” Windows XP Professional…..
It depends on your browser, a modern browser such as Chrome, Brave, Opera, Firefox etc should work. IE and older versions of Safari will not support our map provider 🙂
As long as you don’t mind hackers and other cyber thieves attacking your computer. Upgrade and install up to date reliable security software now.
I don’t know how you can describe XP as ‘reliable’ these days. The fact that it does not support modern encryption means that, for example, it cannot receive any of my signed emails. Browsers too, especially Chrome, cannot be updated. It is simply not safe, can be easily breached and you may cause others on the Internet grief without even being aware of it, quite aside from the risks to your own privacy and data.
Even if you have a current antivirus program, patching vulnerabilities is JUST as important and antivirus cannot protect you if you fall prey to an exploit. Don’t be complacent!
Why don’t you install a lightweight Linux distribution on your old PC such as Lubuntu? Get both a modern OS with all the security, and good performance on old equipment?
Don’t be intimidated, Dave, by all those priggishly decrying your use of XP: they clearly have not understood why we in the military buy obsolete stuff.
By the time something’s declared obsolete its efficacy, reliability and robustness are proven. The way everything in the computer industry is released these days — the hail-Mary approach — you’re at least as likely to be hacked on an up-to-date system as on an obsolete one.
In addition to which, of course, is the fact that XP is far easier to use — especially for the keyboard-literate — than any of its successors.
ΠΞ
Hi John, you can use the app on a mobile phone and some tablets, otherwise use the website 🙂
I get. emails but cannot remember the ladt time I had one regarding the price of fuel – will go for the app
So, unless I use an app on my phone I can’t join in? Byeeeeeeee.
Before we go into detail on the exciting new app, to reassure all members, the emails and website will remain in use as a viable tool for free fuel information.
Unfortunately a lot of us have not had fuel price updates for months via email – I do not use apps, so the only thing I get now is newsletters. Please re-instate the fuel price emails.
Read the article! 😐
yes price ones dried up which was the ones i want and would still like to receive please
Yes i did notice the change and wondered what had happened. many thanks for that good clear and honest explanation. Petrolprices is one of the most useful apps I use and has saved me so much money so thank you guys (and gals)for your hard work keeping it going and improving it.
I’ll be more than happy to give you updates on prices when I can. I always like helping fellow car owners ()and computer users as well!)
I have stopped getting the price ones too:(
Please contact support@petrolprices.com. We are here to help but we need to know your email address to do this.
By the looks of it you have stopped sending out the price alert e-mails. You obviously have our email addresses as we all received the email to look at this article.
except that that email address doesnot work
You have our email addresses as your sending us emails but not the prices email I used to receive twice a week
Carry on with the good work you’re doing.
I haven’t received any petrol price info either. Don’t really want anything else so please can you reinstate them for me
I refer to the comment earlier, just pop us your email to the Support Team at support@petrolprices.com. That will enable us to find out what status your account is in the system. For several reasons we don’t send emails to users, for example if they don’t open them we stop sending them after 9 months, but there could be 10 other reasons why we’ve stopped sending to you. Also your ISP may have put our emails into Junk or Promotions without telling you, we can’t change this but you can by flagging the emails are not Junk.
“If you don’t open them we stop sending them” – is possibly the problem. Lots of people read either the plain text part of an email, or a restricted HTML part; in neither case will tracking information which presumably you imbed in the mails get fetched from your server. In other words, we DO read the mails but our mail clients don’t tell you that.
Well done, ‘PETROL PRICES’, BRILLIANT SERVICE TO US MOTORISTS
Where are the price emails we used to get? In the last few months I haven’t seen any, only emails on a newsletter format…….why??
I need fuel price information please
I’ve not been awarded points for reviews, even written ones, in several months.
It’s get awarded 5 points for reporting prices. But, I don’t get 10 for an update, or a bonus 10 for completing all four fuel types either.
Enjoying the app though – keep up the good work!
GOOD
All I want is the petrol prices but now never get them so the rest of the bumff is a waste of time
“But the more who take part and provide us with information to earn points and rewards, the better the service will be for the benefit of everyone else.” What a lovely bloke. Take, take, take without any giving – I mean this is what’s wrong with the world in one comment.
That’s a bit unfair. It must cost PP money to provide this service. They have to get income somehow.
In the past, I often made use of the facility on the website to search for the cheapest prices along a route – is there any possibility of having this functionality on the app?
I have downloaded to my iPhone 4s which is ios 9.3.5 ans I get the maps but no petrol stations.
You should probably update your iOS, it’s v12.3.1 now!
You can’t update the older iPhones I have the iPhone 4 they no longer support them it’s just as bad as not being able to update my 16 year old navman which is still fully functioning the battery still charges aswell
I do not have an I-phone.
Missed the petrol price information for a while now. It was our primary reason for receiving these emails. Does it have to be on an app? Think my phone will explode with everyone wanting me to ‘have an app’
I have not received petrol price updates for several months now…I miss them.
I find your articles informative (thank you) & benefit from the fuel price info — please continue …….
My phone number is not accepted for downloading the app.
I had the same prob at first. It did accept +447———-
How do I find petrol prices ??
Well done guys, move with the times or get lost and disappear. Upwards and onwards apps are the way.
My email/password are accepted now in the Web app, but it sticks on “Loading your Results” and none of the menus are activated. It also centres the half of the map that is visible on RAF Odiham, a place in which I have not the slightest interest.
I assume the App is not going to work too well on Android 2.3.6, either. What level does it require?
Hi Paul, you’ll need Android 6.0 or up 🙂
So unless I buy a new phone I can’t use the app? My phone works with all my other apps on Android 5.1 is there no backwards comparability.
I agree with you Paul, my phone is just 2 years old Android 5.1 why was 6.0 decided. All other apps work okay with my phone. I won;t be buying another phone till it breaks.
Delighted to see I’m neither the person with the oldest phone in these comments, nor the only person on the planet who still prefers a laptop to apps. Developers of this utility should remember that the average money-conscious person who takes the trouble to find the cheapest petrol station is also among the least likely to have spent money on the latest model phone, and hence often cannot use apps optimised to the latest operating system. 🙂
This new arrangement of price reporting / confirmation sounds like a great move forward – congratulations, I hope that it’s as good as it sounds 👍
Excellent initiatives
Why have I stopped getting my fuel price emails
As long as your price information is more accurate than your use of apostrophes, I’m happy.
I’m having the same problem emails, but no price information
I know that you don’t like using fuel station like Costco etc as they are only for members BUT it still has cheaper prices for members so why not have them on the app?
You did do for a while but then stopped as when I tried to put it on, the app a few weeks ago it wouldn’t let me even after I sent you an email telling you about it & asking for you to put it on it never happened.
App still doesn’t keep my fuel type or my postcode like the old one did, I have to keep telling it what fuel I want & postcode.
What do l do to get the station pump prices
I have not received price information for some weeks and would like the service reinstated.
I would like to download the app where is it ?
Scroll down to the bottom of the page & click either Google play store or Apple app store.
I’ve tried the App Store non of my devices will load the app my iPad is up to date with version 10.3.3 my iPhone is up to date with version 7.1.2 you need to support older devices ..Or the amount of pennies I save on fuel will all be blown into oblivion by having to buynew phones and iPads along with a large chunk of my wages
You should still be able to use the website, unfortunately we do have to cut off our device supporting level at some point and after consulting around we decided on Android 6.0 and iOS 9.0. Anything above these should work, but a full list of supported devices is on the Apple Store and Play store will tell you if your device is supported
I too am getting hit and miss weeks with the price alert email!
I still get newsletters but can’t remember the last time I received an email with fuel prices
I have also had no prices for months although I do receive the newsletters
I just spotted a grammar error in the following sentence in the above article.
The main benefit of the data from Experian Catalist is it’s accuracy because it’s based on fuel card transaction data by forecourt and fuel grade. The first (it’s) should be its, because it’s is short for it is.
However, the article itself was comprehensive and explanatory, but welcome.
I am very impressed with the plan and your sharing of comprehensive rational. Many thanks and best of luck.
I do not use apps, so the info has not really been helpful, I just need to know the best available prices in my area, without going around the houses to find out,
I can’t get any information on petrol stations or prices
I receive e-mail but have a problem finding
Locations and prices. Also can l receive diesel prices too.
thanks for the update. What happens with those of us that did subscribe to the Plus service?
I used to receive petrol price emails but nothing for ages now! Shame, I thought it was a useful servivce
Thank u for the update greatly appreciate what you do. Also how you have progressed in but a few short years
Long may you continue. Your service saved me money this week I normally use Asda/ Morrison’s with occasional top up atShell sometimes their prices are competitive. Surprise that local Coop (Ex Esso ) 2p more competitive
Thank you. Would not have looked had I not read you weekly update.
Hi no prices in mails will not load maps ,browser incompatible ( Chrome ) ? on chromebook
How do I inform you of my change of address.
Thanks for this informatiion. I haven’t been able to get onto the website for some time now and I couldn’t understand why. Will try to get on it again.
I’ve no problems if you diversify this. But I think I should mention that some 15% of adults do not use Smartphones. I am one and I’ve no plans to change. So if you maintain existing services as promised then this devoted follower will still be there.
My mobile phone is just that – I do not need a smartphone. Please maintain service so that I can get the info from my laptop