Nov 09 2005
Fuel Perks, How I Love Thee
Dave screams…
45 CENTS FOR A TANK OF GAS!!!
“HOW OH HOW CAN I ALSO HAVE A TANK OF GAS FOR 45 CENTS?!?” you ask, plaintively.
Well, you see, Giant Eagle has this program called “Fuel Perks.” It works like this: you allow them to track you like cattle when you shop at their store. They give you the “Advantage Card,” which you use every time you buy their overpriced groceries. It’ll give you a little savings off of some of your merchandise, and they learn what you like to eat so that some day when our Corporate Overlords finally move us all into work camps, they’ll know how to stock the larder.*
Anyway, they also give you ten cents off per gallon of gas you purchase at their GetGo stations for every $50 worth of merchandise you buy. So Jul and I had $1.00 saved up. Then we moved Maxx’s insulin prescription over from Medic when they went belly-up (that’s another story). For moving prescriptions over to them during the Medic-to-Walgreen’s transition, Giant Eagle was offering a $1 off per gallon coupon. So now we had $2.00 off/gallon. Then we went grocery shopping, bringing our total discount up to $2.20. I had the SUV with me yesterday and ran the tank virtually dry in anticipation of filling up with cheap gas. This I did, to the tune of 2.9 cents per gallon! Wow, that was great.
Now if only the oil companies would temper their greed a bit, it wouldn’t be so exciting to get cheap gas once.
* I made that part up
Dave, you have a blog! I had no idea, or I would have visited sooner. Sorry about that…Anyway, I love the whole Giant Eagle/cheap gas thing. Even getting a 10-cent-per-gallon discount feels like a small victory over the oil companies.
Gotta love fuel perks. Now if they only had that at Target, i would never have to pay for gas again!
Haven’t had it for long, Scott. Joe was talking about doing one, and you inspired me with yours.
And yeah, Fuel Perks is a great thing!
I’ve never heard of anything like those Fuel Perks. I wish we had something like that up here.
I’m surprised Wegman’s doesn’t have something like this, but I suppose they don’t have any stores with gas stations out front. (?)
OMG, Patti you are SO right. I would make a killing if Target had fuel perks.
As long as neither of you start shopping at Wal-Mart with any kind of regularity. I’d be very sad to see your souls sold like that.
[...] Follow up to an earlier post: little sister Patti hit up Giant Eagle for an 1-cent tank of gas. Damnit, she beat me by 44 cents. [...]
Do you people realize that you are paying more for groceries than you are saving on gas? And giant eagle is now in your pocket twice? They are certainly not a charity. Any money you are “saving” on gas you are “overpaying” in food bills. If that wasn’t the case, the company would not provide the card. So you paid $10 for a $50 fill up… my guess is you were overcharged by $80 in groceries for you $40 savings.
A local chain down here in Richmond, VA just started this program up. Only difference is this chain doesn’t have it’s own gas stations, so you aren’t paying them twice.
It only benefits those who shop a lot and if you go in with the idea of spending more money to get more perks, you’ve already lost.
It’s a loyalty program, it rewards the most loyal customers. Always has worked that way, and it always will.