Supermarket dockets, rewards points, price-lock apps: every fuel brand wants you in a scheme. Here’s the honest maths on what each is worth, and the one habit that outsaves all of them.

The 4-cent docket, in real dollars

The classic offer: spend $30 or more at Woolworths or Coles, get 4 cents off per litre at their partnered fuel chains. Coles lets you take bonus points instead.

Run the numbers on a typical car. A 50-litre tank saves $2 per fill. Fill weekly and never miss a docket, and you save roughly $100 a year. Most people miss fills and land closer to $20–45. Dockets also expire, usually within two to four weeks, so stockpiling doesn’t work.

That’s not nothing. But it’s small, and it comes with a trap: a 4-cent docket at an expensive station is worse than no docket at a cheap one. Stations near docket-partner supermarkets are not reliably the cheap ones.

Price-lock apps: the one scheme with real upside

7-Eleven’s fuel lock works differently: the app lets you lock the current price at nearby stores and use it within seven days. Locked at the bottom of a price cycle, that can be worth 20 cents a litre or more near the peak: $10+ on one tank, several times the value of a docket.

The catch is the same as always: it only pays if you lock at the right time, which means watching the cycle. The lock is a tool for cycle-timing, not a substitute for it.

The habit that beats every scheme

Sydney’s price cycle regularly swings 25–35 cents per litre between trough and peak. We explain how it works in the price-cycle guide. Timing your fill near the bottom of the cycle is worth $12–17 on a 50-litre tank. The docket adds $2.

So the ranking, by yearly value for a typical driver:

  1. Fill near the cycle bottom (worth hundreds per year: the finder shows today’s prices around you).
  2. Price-lock at the bottom if a lock app covers stations you actually use.
  3. Use a docket when you naturally have one: on top of the above, never instead of it.
  4. Points programs: treat as a rounding error for fuel decisions.
Fuel dockets, price-lock, cycle-timing and points ranked by yearly value 1. Fill near the cycle bottom worth hundreds of dollars a year 2. Price-lock at the bottom $10+ per tank (several times a docket) 3. Use a docket when you have one $20–45 a year typically (up to $100) 4. Points programs a rounding error for fuel decisions
Ranked by the guide's own order (1 to 4). Only the docket has a printed dollar figure, so it's the only row drawn with a bar; the other rows' rank and quoted phrase carry their value.

The honest summary

Schemes are fine as toppings. They go wrong when they choose your station for you: loyalty to any single chain quietly costs more than every docket it hands you, because the cheapest station this week is usually somewhere else. Check the price first, then see which discounts happen to apply.