23 Feb 2024

A petrol station blunder saves Dunedin drivers

10:48 am on 23 February 2024
Heavily discounted 95 petrol at Waitomo Northgate on Wednesday

Heavily discounted 95 petrol at Waitomo Northgate on Wednesday Photo: ODT/Supplied

By Tim Scott, ODT

A petrol station blunder gifted Dunedin motorists a barely believable bargain.

A sign at the Waitomo Northgate fuel station, in Cumberland St, advertised 95 unleaded fuel at $0.82 per litre on Wednesday.

The error caught the attention of customers on Facebook, with many commenting on how cheap the price was.

One commenter said some customers had managed to buy fuel at that price until the error was fixed.

A Waitomo Group spokeswoman said there had been a "glitch" with their system on Wednesday.

A pricing error had been made and a "2" had been incorrectly replaced with a "0", which was attributed to human error.

The spokeswoman confirmed the error was displayed both on the sign and at the pump, allowing customers to get an unofficial discount off their fuel.

However, Waitomo was not concerned about any losses arising from the error.

"We made an error, so that's what the price was.

"It wasn't meant to happen, it was our bad so we fixed it."

The station was unmanned and the error had been made remotely from the company's main office in Hamilton.

The error was visible for about an hour before it was quickly identified and remedied, the spokeswoman said.

"The good thing is our sites down there are really popular, so people do notice what we're doing because we've brought a lot of competition to the market down there.

"Occasionally these things do happen, we do have controls in place and we put another control in place after yesterday," the spokeswoman said.

- This story was first published by the Otago Daily Times

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