A high-tech tool being unveiled today lets price- conscious motorists nationwide find low prices for gasoline in their cities and neighborhoods.
The national motorist group AAA is behind the effort, which is free to Internet users and tracks gas prices at 85,000 stations nationwide – 1,700 of them in Colorado.
The group’s “Fuel Price Finder” service at www.aaa.com uses portions of data from credit-card transactions to help consumers zero in on the best deals, AAA Colorado spokeswoman Mary Greer said.
“It will help people on limited budgets,” Greer said. “We think it’s of value to the community.”
Here’s how it works: When a consumer types a ZIP code into the website’s search screen, the site finds the most recent prices for all grades of gas, including diesel, at stations within a 3-, 5- or 10-mile radius.
Local motorists expressed mixed reactions.
Katie Porter, 21, of Denver said the website is “a great idea.”
“It points people in the right direction,” she said.
Doug Tisdale, 56, of Cherry Hills said, “Having the opportunity to have that information on your computer is of great value and is a great service. You could save $3 or $4 per fill-up.”
Others were less enthusiastic.
“I’m not going to drive out of my way for 30 cents,” said Jack Simpson, 52, of Morrison. “Time is worth more than money, so to save a few cents, I don’t think I’d use it.”
Lavon Begay, 48, of Englewood felt similarly. “I wouldn’t go out of my way. I have other things to take care of.”
The price information is compiled by Oil Price Information Service, or OPIS, a New Jersey company that tracks petroleum prices and products; it has shared price information with AAA for eight years.
OPIS for years has had agreements with credit-card companies and retailers, tracking price information at about 70 percent of all U.S. stations, said Fred Rozell, the company’s retail pricing director.
What’s new is this information is now being broken down by individual gas stations and repackaged for consumer use over the Web. It took six months for OPIS to build the service for AAA.
The founder of a competing gas-price tracking service that relies on volunteers to spot prices said AAA’s service is good but not perfect.
AAA’s site will be updated only once a day, but GasBuddy.com is updated many times a day, said Jason Toews, the Minneapolis computer programer who co-founded the nonprofit GasBuddy in 2000.
That’s a necessity considering prices can change every few hours, he said.
“We often have prices reported within minutes,” Toews said. AAA’s “information is not timely enough.”
OPIS does a poor job of tracking prices at wholesale gas stations, gas pumps at grocery stores and small, out-of-the- way stations, Toews said.
“Those places have some of the cheapest prices,” he said.
Prices listed on the AAA site could be several days out of date, AAA’s Greer acknowledged, because “some stations might not sell gas as quickly or their customers pay with cash.”
Consumers might wonder whether the privacy of their credit-card data could be threatened with the advent of the service.
But OPIS’s Rozell said that’s not an issue with the site because the grade and the price are the only information extracted from each transaction.
“We don’t get any personal information,” he said.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-820-1473 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
