The other day I filled up with fuel. It wasn't cheap. As I drove away I wondered if there were a site where I could look up local fuel prices. When I got home, I did a search. There wasn't much. Not one of those I found could give me fuel prices at local filling stations. As you know, a few hundred meters between filling stations can mean a few cents per liter difference in price.
So I did a bit of research and came up with a concept. Basically it boils down to this: a site where filling stations can sign up for free and enter fuel prices and promotions. Users can search by postcode or postcode and suburb. Then I put some icing on the cake.
To show results, the page doesn't reload. Ajax does its magic. That means fast, really fast. Drop down select boxes populate from the database using Ajax as well. Clicking on the address of a filling station returned with the results will bring up a Google map showing the location of the filling station.
I knew from the start that getting filling stations to sign up would be difficult. I emailed all the fuel companies, handed business cards I had printed to some filling stations - nothing. It takes a while for anything online to take off, if it does. So, I'm still hopeful.
Go and have a look at Petrol Price Site and enter any Australian residential postcode - there are more than 16,000 in the database. Try 2100, 2300, 2320 or something like that.
The question is, how do I get filling stations to sign up?
