I think you explained it yourself pretty well.
$8 difference multiplied out over approximately 26 top offs a year = $208, which is a significant amount of money.
Yeah but it's not much money to save over the course of a whole year... And it's not as tho you'll have that $208 in a lump sum at the end of the year to go buy an ounce with. It's more the kind of thing you'd notice from week to week - right after filling up on Friday you might notice the extra five or ten bucks in your wallet but I maintain that five or ten bucks isn't enough to worry about.
Plus, as has been mentioned, some of the higher quality petrols provide better economy so it has a chance of evening out in the end anyway.
But the main reason that I don't just go for the cheapest is because some of the crappy petrol stations dilute the petrol more than is legally allowed. Sometimes it just means you're getting slightly less petrol than you paid for but sometimes it's worse than that; If a lot of dilutent (is that the correct spelling of dilutent?) is added to the fuel you can end up damaging the engine over the course of several tanks. I've heard more than just a few stories of cars being written-off due to the engine damage being so severe and other cars needing new engines, fuel pumps, injectors etc.
I've never heard of that happening at a Shell or BP ... I'm not saying it's never happened - just that I've heard of it happening at Liberty, Caltex and several independent filling stations but never Shell or BP.
I guess I
can understand it actually. If people are willing to take the (admittedly quite small) risk or if they just don't care then that's reason enough to go for the cheapest stuff they can find because five bucks is five bucks. Personally tho, I'd rather pay the extra five bucks for that little bit of peace of mind.
(plus, my car does actually run smoother on Shell so that's the main reason I use it)
I don't know about the rest of the world but here in sweden the companies buys gas from eachother... So I go with the cheapest..
It's the same way here. Most of the petrol comes from Shell or Mobil where I live. It's then sold to all the individual distributors like Caltex, Liberty, United etc.
Once they've got it they ad all their own branded additives to make it Premium or Super or V-Power or whatever... and the bad ones ad ethanol or nail polish remover or old used-up dishwater. :lol: