Mark Brader wrote:
Frank Slootweg writes:

4. American petrol/gas stations charge what they bloody well like.

While American petrol/gas prices are still ridiculously low compared
to Oz/Europe, prices vary by upto a *factor* of two within a short
distance ...

No, we didn't misread. Trust me, we are *very* careful reading fuel
prices, especially considering we drove/drive 'around the world' in Oz a
couple of times in very thirsty campervans.

What were the two prices? Did you actually fill up at the lower price?
Did the cheaper station have long lines of cars waiting?

For the *extremes*, the factor of two, the distance between stations
was tens of miles, perhaps 'even' a hundred. We came from the low price
one, did not need to fill up yet and just drove on till we saw a more
reasonable price.

But to answer your second question: No, in a less extreme cases the
cheaper stations didn't have long lines, and what surprised us even more
was that in some cases the difference was as high as 20% (40 cents on 2
dollars) and people were just happily filling up at the high-price
station, while they could *see* that there were no queues at the cheap
station *accross the road*! Yes, we Dutch are 'known'/supposed to be
cheap skates, but 20%?, accross the road?, give me a break!

[...]