No asda petrol stations near me so it's not worth the trip :-(

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I think I heard that Morissons are reducing their prices as well, hopefully this kicks off big style and we get a nice chunk off our petrol/diesel bills, I know I could do with it!

Yeah, they can't really use fuel as a loss leader like alcohol as it won't necessarily get people in the store and I could see it quickly bankrupting even the largest retailers.

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They're just finally dropping the prices back down to near where they were before the "fuel crisis". Took them long enough.

Its got very little to do with them... movement in prices mostly just reflects the wholesale market albeit with some delays.

If you're finding that one supermarket is 3p cheaper than some local branded garage then yes, that 3p difference is the supermarket discounting a bit and relying on a high volume of passing trade. If however you're remembering what prices were a few months ago etc.. and thinking 'finally, they've lowered the prices' then that lowering of prices by any significant amount actually has got very little do do with anyone involved in the retail end of the business its just the reflection of wholesale prices and nor had the previous rise in prices.

One of my co-workers actually owns a garage as an 'investment' - it isn't really much to write home about as far as investments are concerned - he's Asian and so, true to form, has some extended family to work for him in the business which cuts out some of the hassle of hiring a manager & regularly replacing staff etc... even so he barely makes any money from selling petrol - the bulk of the profits come from the shop.

Do you know what the exact price was the day before, the exact price the next day and the price move in the wholesale market? Maybe they did preempt prices slightly - tis irrelevant and likely was a short lived increase in margin (if there even was one). If you consider that you're basing that on your own selective memory and are reliant on a guesstimate as to how much of it was just profiteering on the the part of the retailers then it isn't reliable. FWIW markets are generally quite efficient and whole sale prices move rapidly. The extra margin to be made is likely to be confined to fuel they already own and on the other side they can potentially also take a hit on their margins if/when prices drop suddenly....

You can just look at the figures and see quite clearly that it is a low margin business.

www.ukpia.com/files/pdf/ukpia-briefing-paper-understanding-pump-price.pdf

A margin of 6% doesn't give much room for prices to be moved around by the retailer. Sure a supermarket can take a hit and discount by a few pence - for the independent owners, if the margins were any lower, then they'd might as well not even be running the business in the first place and just keep their cash in the bank/investment fund.

For people who complain about fuel - the main issue with it is the tax... for most of the population of the UK the place you fill up at doesn't have a monopoly and no one is ripping you off - its actually very fairly priced on the part of the supplier.

It was hardly selective memory on Zpyder's part.

A quick look around at the time and many websites/papers were reporting price hikes due to profiteering, it was announced that everyone should panic buy and garage forecourts started bumping their prices, and funnily enough others kept the prices the same, so how do you figure that out, were those that kept prices the same selling at a loss?

137.7 here
137.9 at teso + clubcard points