KEY POINTS:
I wonder if other readers have experienced the same situation my husband has - twice now. From time to time I shop at Foodtown and receive discounted petrol vouchers. The last two I got were for 10c and 8c respectively. My husband used these at participating Shell service stations and on both occasions he only received 4c a litre discount. When he asked why this was, he was told that the advertised discount for supermarket vouchers is only 4c so that is all that would be given. Is this right? Does the supermarket still get charged the full amount even though only 4c a litre is given? Both vouchers were within their use-by date. Denise Frost, Mangere.
What a very good question. I passed this on to Shell, who explained that at the service stations where your husband presented the vouchers the cashiers were new to the roles and gave your husband the wrong advice.
The retailer who operates both stations has said he will retrain all of his staff, and improve his induction training. Shell has apologised to Mrs Frost, and sent her a card with $35 loaded, redeemable at any Shell station.
Good work, Shell.
And a word of advice from Rodney Smith, retail operations manager for Shell New Zealand. If for some reason the barcode reader only allows you a 4c a litre discount, but your voucher says 8c or 10c or some other amount, and is within the use-by date, you can ask the attendant to look through their pile of used vouchers (under the counter or wherever) to find one with the same amount. The attendant can then put that through the barcode reader so you get your full entitlement.
The supermarket company, in this case Progressive Enterprises, does not get charged the full discounted rate. All they do is print the till slips, and it's up to the customers to use them or otherwise. Shell carries the cost of discounted petrol.
So it's win-win. The supermarkets get more business by offering petrol vouchers, and Shell gets more customers by supplying the cheaper fuel rate.
At the South Titirangi Rd end of Park Rd, near Toby's Restaurant, there are painted carpark markings on the side of the road. This is a corner with limited visibility, and in the same part of the road there are double yellow lines. This means that you cannot pass the parked cars without going over the yellow lines, which is against the law. Is the council aware of this, and do they have plans to fix it? Zoe Hawkins, Titirangi.
Traffic engineers from Waitakere City Council have been for a look, and say that, yes, the no-passing lines are indeed in the wrong place. Having said that, the council has no record of any crashes here in the last 10 years, so they feel it's not a significant problem.
They will be looking at improvements in the next few weeks, and will shift the road markings as appropriate.
With the Northern Gateway toll road just opened and all the resealing work being done on the Northern Motorway, can you find out when the only rough-chip section, northbound between Silverdale and Orewa, will finally get the same smooth bitumen finish as the rest of the motorway system? Brent Elworthy, Auckland.
It's on the list to be resealed before April.
