RoadMorons strike again
Sometime last night, it seems. Update: Marita says it was Thursday night.
By my calculations, I fill up my car with petrol every 27.5 days
With the usual media coverage of petrol price rises over Easter (yes, that’s how the market economy works… when demand goes up, so do prices…), I was pondering how much money I’ve been spending on petrol.
The car barely goes anywhere on weekdays, and even on the weekends I’m doing perhaps around 50 kilometres.
Given I never pay cash at petrol stations, I had a quick skim through my credit card history to see how often I fill up. And the answer is that the median number of days between fills is 27.5 days. (Usually I don’t bother going in unless the tank is under about 15% full.)
Sometimes it’ll be as short as a week or so between petrol visits — such as over the Christmas period when there’s often a trip or two up to the country. But at other times I’ll go as much as 42 days between refills.
I also worked out that I’ve spent $716.26 on petrol in the past year, and my median petrol cost per day is $1.71… so I suppose about 1.3 litres at current costs.
But I’m lucky enough that most of the time, I simply don’t use much petrol, because most of my trips each week are either on foot or on PT.
Be nice if more people had that option.
- 20/8/2009: The monthly refueling
Tags: driving, petrol, transport
4 comments
A 4WD actually used for 4WDing
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of four wheel drives, but it’s nice to see one that’s obviously used for its intended purpose, rather than just cruising around the suburbs.
It appears to be real mud, not those stick-on blobs you hear about.
Peugot 308: Turbo-powered sneaker
For some reason, every time I see a Peugot 308, especially in white, it reminds me of a giant sneaker.
In fact specifically it reminds me of the sneaker in The Magic Portal (around the 12:30 mark).
Tags: cars, Peugot
3 comments
Citylink billing screwup
On the 29th of December I hired a Mini from Hertz as a Christmas present for Marita.
So that we could drive on the Citylink tollway, I temporarily added it to my Citylink account.
- 29/12/2010 12:01pm. Added XPE308
- 29/12/2010 12:30pm. Travelled on tollway
- 30/12/2010 10:37am. Removed XPE308 from account
I thought no more about it until Monday, when a letter from Hertz arrived, saying that the travel had not been on a Citylink account, and therefore Citylink had billed Hertz (the car’s owner) for $8.60, and Hertz had added a $5.00 administration fee, and just for good measure, $1.36 of GST.
Grumble grumble.
It got worse. Upon looking at my Citylink account for that period, it turned out Citylink had charged me for 9 trips, costing $31.16, by the same vehicle, on the 14th, 19th and 20th of January.
It appears that Citylink’s computers are stuffed. They evidently don’t handle the temporary addition and removal of vehicles to accounts.
I can almost understand there might be a delay of 24 hours for this, but not two weeks — and remember, they would have billed Hertz at some stage later, long after their billing system should have known precisely when the Mini was meant to be on my account.
On Tuesday I rang Citylink about this. The bloke on the phone was very helpful; he refunded the $31.16, and gave me a reference number to quote to Hertz when I ring them.
I haven’t rung Hertz yet. Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if they refuse to refund the $5 administration fee.
Some people like to have a go at Myki by way of claiming that Citylink’s billing system is perfect. It wasn’t always the case, and from this experience, it’s clear it still isn’t.
And Myki’s never stung me for as much as $31.
By the way, make sure you dispute incorrect charges with Citylink within 60 days. In the small print on their statements it says:
Please note: If you disagree with your Account Balance, you have 60 days from receipt of your statement, to contact CityLink. After 60 days, the Account Balance recorded on the statement will be considered to be correct.
Nice, hey?
Oh yeah, and Citylink still haven’t fixed their web site’s security configuration problem.
Update Monday 28/2: I didn’t have the stamina to ring Hertz, so used their web form instead, on Friday. Today they’ve replied. I’m suitably impressed that they have refunded both the Citylink charge and the administration fee.
Tags: Citylink, Hertz
10 comments
Logic?
I’m hoping one of you smart people can explain the logic behind this.
Oh, bravo
Oh bravo, yes. Just block the whole road.
And I might note this guy was happy to park himself there while the light he was blocking was still green.
Mini for Christmas
Marita may never own a car (she doesn’t need one), but she likes (new) Minis. Always spots them on the road.
So I got her one for Christmas.
Well, for a day. Hertz offer them as part of their “fun collection“, so I reserved one and went along on Wednesday to pick it up. Despite the posters on the wall at Hertz saying “Every second counts”, they had a very long queue due to computer problems, but eventually I got it and drove over to Marita’s to pick her up.
I had told her to expect me at 11:30, but hadn’t told her what I would bring, and it did manage to catch her by surprise.
We jumped in and went for a spin to see her brother and his girlfriend fiancée down in Cape Paterson, which is past Wonthaggi.
If you’re driving to Cape Paterson, be aware that Mr Google doesn’t know about the roundabout outside the Wonthaggi hospital. If you think that’s the roundabout referred to, and follow the directions and take the third exit, eg turn right, you’ll end up near the Desalination Plant and the nearby wind turbines, which are impressive, but not where we wanted to go.
We had a nice afternoon tea, a walk around the beach, and then drove back into Melbourne.
The next morning, before returning the car, we had a nice little drive around the place… up Beach Road, through Elwood, along Acland Street, that One Sweet Promenade, then around Albert Park Lake, back to Beach Road and through Port Melbourne, over the Westgate and back again, and along St Kilda Road, before filling it up and taking it back to Hertz, where for the second day in a row, they had a queue out the door (which fortunately we could avoid this time).
The Mini is a heck of a lot of fun. Very nice to drive, very zoomy, and seems as economical as my Astra (eg, very). And of course it looks great. Quite comfortable, too… at least in the front.
On the down side, there’s virtually no room in the back seats, unless you’re going to limit yourself to carrying only amputee midgets. In practical terms it’s clearly a vehicle for 1-2 people max. Ditto, very little room in the boot. The speedometer is in the middle of the front console, so you have to keep looking across to check your speed. This version didn’t have cruise control, though I would assume some do.
I don’t think I’d want to own one (it just wouldn’t be practical), but it was great fun for a day.
