All the Wal-mart haters out there, rejoice; I probably just cost them a few cents more than normal on this gas transaction. Hehehe! (You should probably view the full-size version of this one. It’s worth it.)

In redeeming some points I’ve earned on an unrelated site over the past couple of months, I turned in four sets of 1,500 “points” for four $10 gift cards at Wal-mart (yup, I shop there; feel free to hate me for it ). In true bureaucratic style, instead of just mailing me a single card worth $40, they really did just send me four cards worth $10 each.

Nothing says “pain in the ass” like busting out four gift cards just to buy $40 in groceries, so I decided to save a cashier having to waste time with it, and have some fun at a self-service gas pump at the gas station in Wal-mart’s parking lot.

It’s run by “Murphy USA,” and offer remarkably competitive prices on gas, and they also accept Wal-mart gift cards. As an added bonus, they yank $0.03 off the per-gallon price for using a gift card, and, in what must be an absolute gaming of the “system,” you can buy gift cards in the store with a credit card (which means you can use a PayPal card, which isn’t actually credit, but debit, and get an extra 1.5% cash back on the purchase).

I wasn’t doing the “usual gaming” this time, just using these gift cards to fill up the truck’s tank. Naturally, the stupid gas guzzler (which, yes, is being replaced fairly soon) was thirsty and had room for $40 worth of fuel (at today’s prices, a fucking Prius can cost over $40 to fill anyway).

The receipt you see in the thumbnail there (clickable for bigger version — it’s much, much longer than it looks in the thumbnail) is the result of my boredom — there was another gift card in my wallet with a whopping $2.02 on it, so this is what happens when someone like me gets bored and gets tired of having five low-value gift cards in his wallet.

Your interpretation of the receipt is accurate: I had to swipe five separate cards and conduct five separate transactions at the pump to get $42.02 in fuel into my truck’s gas tank. Instead of actually putting the nozzle back after each $10 burst, I just bonked the little sensor flap by hand. It had to look silly, but it sure did produce an amusing receipt, with many reminders of their supposedly “low, low cigarette prices!” Do you smoke? Buy your smokes at the gas station — where you can show those cancer-fearing people what-for by just killing yourself via explosion, not smoking-induced cancer

A Quick Note About “Gaming The System”

Yes, I’m aware this isn’t a huge “win,” though it is actually one worth pursuing. The gas station in question almost always comes in among the best price on gas amongst its competitors, sometimes taking the top spot. It’s never off the “most competitive” price by more than a penny or so.

The $0.03-per-gallon discount on the gas price for using a gift card amounts to a 1% discount on the fuel at current prices. Another way to look at it is for every $3 I spent on fuel, I’m actually getting 1.0104 gallons of fuel (heh).

Adding PayPal to the mix (since they actually froze my account over the New Year holiday at the end of 2007, while I was on vacation, I no longer keep any money in that account except to directly fund planned purchases, just to get the cashback bonus on the purchases — it never costs me a dime to do this; the account turned out to be frozen because they thought someone had gained access to the account who shouldn’t have, and they turned out to be wrong — it was just me) adds another 1.5% off the actual purchase price of the gift card.

It’s a very small double-whammy to the various providers: I don’t actually pay exactly $40 for a $40 gift card, and that $40 gift card buys more than $40 worth of fuel (when priced at their advertised price).

For this specific transaction, since I didn’t actually pay at all for the $40 in gift cards, and because of their discount, I essentially got 14.157 gallons of fuel (worth $42.46 had I paid cash) for $1.99 (the $2.02 gift card, that I did purchase earlier, minus the 1.5% cashback). Sweet.

In an instance where I buy a gift card and use it exclusively for gas, here’s how those numbers work out for me:

• Gift card actually costs $49.25 ($0.75 cash back, automatically).
• That $50 worth of “credit” at the pump buys 16.84 gallons of fuel, which, without the “gift card” discount, would normally cost $50.50.

In short, doing it this way, I pay $49.25 for $50.50 worth of fuel, essentially saving me $1.50 on every $50 I spend on fuel, or a total of 3%.