Frustrating and surprised at a couple gasoline receipts
Posted By RichC on June 4, 2023
You would have to know my penny-pinching personality to truly understand my frustration over gasoline prices, but these receipts had me pulling out my hair.
A little pretext: My wife has ALWAYS only purchased Shell gasoline for her cars. No matter the price, she always goes to Shell and has been loyal for decades. Over the years, I’ve suggested that she might want to occasionally fill up where the price is a little lower, but even as the price differential started to be noticeable in the final tally, she stayed loyal.
In November, we joined Costco and both of us have enjoyed shopping there. When I’m driving a “gas” car (ie. Florida), I’ll fill up at Costco in Delray Beach and she noticed that there was a significant difference in price between Costco (plus percentage for Costco branded Citibank credit card) and the local stations. So she decided to give it a shot this week for her Acura RDX (premium or occasionally mid-range). As someone who is always. on GasBuddy checking prices (see 2008 post for a smile), I was pretty happy about this … BUT I did not realize Costco prices there Regular gasoline MUCH lower than their PREMIUM gasoline (they don’t sell diesel so can’t fill my BMW X5 35d).
This only came to light because she needed to get to an appointment when her tank was empty and so decided to add $10 at the local Shell station before she would be near the new Costco in West Chester, Ohio. Since it was only going to be a couple gallons, she selected mid-grade and paid $3.919. The next day she stopped as planned at the Costco where the REGULAR was priced $3.159 and proceeded to fill up with PREMIUM .. where it was priced $4.149 (nearly $1 more than Regular). So much for any savings or convincing her to fill up at a station other than Shell … pretty depressing for a penny-pincher.
Comments