That's interesting Rehctub. I don't read any of the bumph that lands in my mailbox, & don't go near shopping centres any more often than absolutely necessary, so did not know the story of these special fuel discount rates.

I had wondered why the big two were pushed into giving up their 8C per litre fuel discounts, & now I know. Good to see the pressure from the little bloke has worked.

Working on the use it or lose it principal, I buy my fuel, milk, bread etc. from the local independent servo. I may pay a little more, but I save at least one 50Km return trip to town, so it works OK.

Unfortunately our area must be considered a low social economic area by the big 2. The fruit & meat are of lower quality, although I don't know about the price being lower. The local independents have gone the same way, so after 20 years I have deserted my local town, & shop on the city fringe.

The small traders don't help themselves. The computer shop had a sign on the door saying "Back in 5 minutes". In the next 2 hours nothing changed. That was the last straw, I needed ink. I now turn left & drive towards the city, not right to the country town.

The laidback country lifestyle is great, but there must be some service too. The country town has lost me.

Butch, I wasn't joking, 'Margin Maintenance' as they like to call it is exactly what the Big Two are doing. Coles run a thing called 'Down Down' and Woolworths call the same thing 'Cheap Cheap'. How it works is simple, if normally the product sells for $10 and the retailer makes a $4 margin, giving the supplier $6, if the product becomes a part of this so called "price promotion program" and is dropped to say $7 by the retailer then the margin demanded by the retailer is maintained at $4, so the supplier only get $3 Woolworths and Coles can't loose!
Any supplier who tries to buck the system, is threatened with all sorts of retribution. After all we must all be team players when it comes to these two big shonks. This will kill small retailers and suppliers and they don't care one bit. There is evidence that they are actually adjusting invoices to take this into account, in one case an invoice was underpaid by $2.5m.