HitsRus wrote: Fact....I've saved over $1400 in fuel purchases in the last 12 months. I haven't spent money for gas in 6 months. I shop at Giant Eagle but mainly the savings came from buying gift cards...something that GE encourages you to do. Both Mrs Hits and I have small cars so when we go and get our fuel perks, we take our 5 gallon cans with us to make sure we get our 30 gallons. I buy gift cards for most of my purchases. I bought almost all of my Xmas gifts on gift cards. I bought over a thousand dollars in Disney gift cards for our vacation ( I should have gotten more) and got fuel perks for all of them. If we go out to eat, we stop at Giant eagle and get a gift card. School shopping for daughter Hits?,,,,gift card for Kohl's. Need athletic equipment or shoes? ...gift card from Dick's. Printer Ink or office eqipm,ent?....gift cards from Staples or Office Max.

I buy everything on gifts cards.

gut wrote: Those fuel discounts have to be a real boon for those grocery stores.

Believe me, unless you are a very frugal shopper to avoid the overpriced goods where they are making up what they give you in gas, then you are not getting anything "free" or "discounted". Although I suppose they may take losing a penny or two per gallon as a sort of advertising expense to get people in the door.

The gift cards are interesting. Since gift cards are often not fully redeemed (some not at all!), the store could maybe tolerate giving you a few bucks there because it's offset by less than full redemption.

JTizzle wrote:

Gas prices had a huge part to play with the economy hurting along with the mortgage debacle. People that don't see this obviously made enough money that the high prices didn't affect them!