Fuel prices have fallen, but should they have fallen by more?

Good News! Fuel isn’t as ridiculously expensive as it was two months ago! However, there is also some Bad News: petrol and diesel remain horrifyingly pricey at 182.69 and 192.38p per litre apiece.

What’s worse though is that - according to the RAC anyway - we should be seeing forecourt prices much lower than that. Sorry to bring you such a downer on a Thursday.

You see, the wholesale price of fuel - that’s the figure that retailers pay to stock up their pumps - has now dropped for eight weeks straight from 151.93p at the start of June to 131.75p at the end of July.

But the last time wholesale was available at this figure, we were paying… 167p per litre. Which means retailers are making an extra £8.63 on every fill-up of a typical 55-litre tank. Huh?

The RAC believes this isn’t right, and is blaming “the big four supermarkets’ unwillingness to cut their prices to a more reasonable level” for a month that has been “unnecessarily tough” on drivers.

“What ought to have happened is that the biggest retailers cut their prices more significantly on a daily basis,” said RAC spokesperson Simon Williams. “Instead, average retailer margin for petrol across the industry has been up around 20p a litre for the last two weeks – more than three times its long-term average.

“The best advice for filling up is no longer to assume the supermarkets are the cheapest, but to shop around as it’s highly likely you’ll find an independent retailer which is doing the right thing and fairly reflecting their lower wholesale costs by charging a lower price.

“This is really encouraging because the independents buy new stock less frequently than the supermarkets as they don’t sell as much, and consequently aren’t as well positioned as their rivals to be able to snap up fuel at lower prices when there are sudden market drops.”

Do not adjust your devices, that was some actual consumer advice on TopGear.com. Been a funny old year hasn’t it?