There's apparently a new site called MyGallons.com. The basic premise is you pay for gasoline now and then use it later. It works at most gas stations and you pay with a special debit card they send you. But, here are the catches I've found so far:
Annual fee of $29.95 if it auto-refills for you, or $39.95 if you manually refill the card
You pay for gas at the current MyGallons price, which is theoretically an average around your home address that is somehow computed. However, I haven't been able to find the current MyGallons price anywhere on their site.
If you fill up away from your home address, the price you are charged adjusts based on average prices/taxes/fees at the other location (this also means you can't put in a home address in a state with low taxes and fill up for that price in a state with high taxes).
There is a recharge fee of $1.95/transaction (at least with a credit card).
Additional price adjustments are made based on whether you fill up an an expensive station or a cheap station (as compared to the MyGallons price. Also, premium will increase the price you are charged.
That being said, this might be a good opportunity especially for people without 5% cards (with 5% you'd have to wait at least several months for prices to go up to beat the 5% savings). Also, if gas prices go down, you lose money. Thus this would've been perfect at the beginning of the summer.
In any case, this is just a small summary of what I've found and I'm interested in what other people think and if there's any way to gain financially from this.
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With all these fees & secret "computations" etc I bet you will only start seeing savings if gas prices increase by way over 10% between when you buy and when you use. A better idea is to get rid of that SUV
Ahhh, the days of Priceline. I must have saved so much on gasoline with them. The best part was that one of the gas stations had the wrong price per gallon in their system, but adjusted the number of gallons down so that the final price was correct (resulting in many more free gallons of gas since Priceline sold you XX gallons of gas).
As for this deal, I'm not really seeing any signifant benefit for the risk of them going under and taking my money with them.
Although it's not exactly the same it seems it would be a lot safer and easier to just buy sufficient amounts of an oil ETF to hedge your gasoline purchases. It would avoid the risks and fees inherent in this company. Too bad they don't yet have a gasoline ETF
I think I agree with everyone thus far. Which is why I haven't signed up. I am wondering however if someone has figured out a way to exploit the system.
Here's something about the service. You probably have to sign up to see if it's exploitable. And if it is, you'd probably want to keep it to yourself. The math sounds good, but I must agree gatzdon about being afraid they might go under and taking all your prepurchased fuel with them. What would they do if gas went to $5/gallon or $6/gallon? Are they hedging correctly?
I believe there are gasoline future to purchase on the futures exchanges.
Bycracky said:Although it's not exactly the same it seems it would be a lot safer and easier to just buy sufficient amounts of an oil ETF to hedge your gasoline purchases. It would avoid the risks and fees inherent in this company. Too bad they don't yet have a gasoline ETF
Annual fee of at least $29.95 plus $1.95 every time mygallons.com decides to pre-purchase gas for you. Then there are these unknown adjustments they can apply at any time. I want HARD numbers before I sign up. Call me crazy, but it seems like the only one profiting off this is mygallons.com.
tulsastorm said:Annual fee of at least $29.95 plus $1.95 every time mygallons.com decides to pre-purchase gas for you. Then there are these unknown adjustments they can apply at any time. I want HARD numbers before I sign up. Call me crazy, but it seems like the only one profiting off this is mygallons.com.That's crazy, a business that makes a profit? What is this, soviet russia?
gatzdon said:Ahhh, the days of Priceline. I must have saved so much on gasoline with them. The best part was that one of the gas stations had the wrong price per gallon in their system, but adjusted the number of gallons down so that the final price was correct (resulting in many more free gallons of gas since Priceline sold you XX gallons of gas).
As for this deal, I'm not really seeing any signifant benefit for the risk of them going under and taking my money with them.
Oh so do I miss those days. The Priceline gas thing was absolutely great. Not only did you get the nice discount upfront (I often got around a 10% discount), nothing stopped you from buying now and using later. It was a long time ago but I remember we were getting close to the seasonal high (likely it was summer/July 4). I bought maybe a ton of gas about 2 months earlier and kept each family member's car filled while saving significant booty.
The best part, w/o planning for it, I bought a second round like that at an Amoco that went out of business eventually. I used them for three weeks w/o them actually taking out my purchases from my Priceline account. Then Priceline jumped out of the business and they refunded me all that gas. I made out like a bandit with that.
Now had I only known about the 5% rewards cards back then, I would have been on cloud nine!
jayK said:That's crazy, a business that makes a profit? What is this, soviet russia?
I'm not opposed to a business being profitable, but as a consumer, I want to know what's in it for me.
Let's look at the numbers...If I pre-purchased 25 gallons of gas, the price of gas would have to go up $1.28 to break even with the initial fees...not counting any adjustments. If I pre-purchased 50 gallons, the price would have to go up $.64. Pre-purchase 100 gallons, prices would have to go up to $.32 to break even. When you reload with 25 gallons, gas prices would have to go up $.08 to break even. 50 gallons, $.04 . 100 gallons, $.02. I suppose you could save money on down the line if you speculate correctly that gas prices will continue to rise sharply, but if this company goes belly up like Priceline's gas card, there is no guarantee you will get your money/gallons back.
When I read the Yahoo! article, it sounded good, but the article doesn't mention the fees. Now it's got me thinking how much MyGallons paid Yahoo!/Reuters for the such a lavish article.
jayK said:tulsastorm said:Annual fee of at least $29.95 plus $1.95 every time mygallons.com decides to pre-purchase gas for you. Then there are these unknown adjustments they can apply at any time. I want HARD numbers before I sign up. Call me crazy, but it seems like the only one profiting off this is mygallons.com.That's crazy, a business that makes a profit? What is this, soviet russia? No, FWF. If a biz makes a profit on you, you're doing it wrong.
Bycracky said:Although it's not exactly the same it seems it would be a lot safer and easier to just buy sufficient amounts of an oil ETF to hedge your gasoline purchases. It would avoid the risks and fees inherent in this company. Too bad they don't yet have a gasoline ETF You clearly haven't looked hard enough...
Q Do you really offer a 100% Money-Back Guarantee? A Yes. If you do not save money on at least one redemption throughout the subscription year, we will refund 100% of your first year's membership fee.
get5dollarbonus said:Q Do you really offer a 100% Money-Back Guarantee? A Yes. If you do not save money on at least one redemption throughout the subscription year, we will refund 100% of your first year's membership fee.That's assuming the company is still around in a year.
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