Fuel cards

[Ian C]

I have used fuel genie fir about 4 yrs now, the reason I got fuel cards is other people can fill up and it saves keeping a months worth of receipts to give to the book keeper only to find out 3 are missing! I get a vat statement at the end of every month that goes to my accountant, so in the long run saves me a bit of money on book keeping charges as there isn't tons of bits of paper to go through!

[Tree Tastic Care]

Fare point didnt think of the accountant charges

[Nick Connell]

I got caught out with uk fuels card. The sales guy said I would save 3-4p a litre on pump prices. They txt the non vat price each week. Turns out it's always more expensive than my local petrol stations. It's also harder to track what you've spent as they weekly invoice and collect a week after. I really thought it was gonna be useful but just cut it up in the end!

[scraggs]

I'm using Keyfuels as one of the cards at the moment and their price on Friday was 99p/l, which looks good but is actually nearer 1.20p/l when you include VAT (not the best deal in the world in reality...).

 

Ouch!

For this week we have 78.28p on UK fuels and 81.58p from Fast fuels

Definitely pays to have 2 or more cards, we find if we don't buy from one for a few weeks then they drop the prices more.

Ian C makes a good point, our book keeper is far happier since we went over to cards.

[djbobbins]

We have got BP fuel cards through work. Typically 2-3 p cheaper than my local Tesco.

[djbobbins]

The best way is to have 2x fuel card accounts from different firms, and go with the cheapest week by week. Also bear in mind that the weekly prices they send to you don't include VAT. I'm using Keyfuels as one of the cards at the moment and their price on Friday was 99p/l, which looks good but is actually nearer 1.20p/l when you include VAT (not the best deal in the world in reality...).

 

 

Surely the 99p must be including VAT or anyone would be mad to go anywhere near it!?!

[Billy]

Get them from two different brands then when one starts jacking the price up stop using it, they will call and offer you a decent price again....they are sneaky, I stopped checking for a while last summer and was paying about 5p over pump price!!

[monkeybusiness]

Get them from two different brands then when one starts jacking the price up stop using it, they will call and offer you a decent price again....they are sneaky, I stopped checking for a while last summer and was paying about 5p over pump price!!

 

This is exactly what happens. Fuel cards are fantastic from a book keeping/convenience point of view, and can be pretty good value too, but in my experience if you don't keep on top of it the prices sneak up and they fleece you. Definitely have 2 and use the cheapest - as has been said this soon gets the expensive firm in the phone asking why you aren't spending any money with them....

[Ian C]

I only use fuel genie as it's only pump price so I know it's not going to go up unless the pumps do also there is no service charges, I got one of the other cards and failed to use it and they charged me 45 quid for the month for nowt so they got binned! At the end of the day there is no such thing as a free lunch they all have to make money, I go with fuel genie purely for convenience all round.