GasBuddy review

[DennyCrane]

I'm sure most of us share a similar opinion when it comes to the astronomical gas prices we have been experiencing for many years now: it's out of control! Although I don't have a magic wand to be able to lower the prices, I would like to share my thoughts on a helpful little tool called GasBuddy. GasBuddy is an application that among other things, tracks the price of gas at local stations. The application is available for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone. And if you'd prefer not to use an app, there is a mobile website as well. I used the BlackBerry app for the purpose of this review, although for the most part it should be applicable to all platforms.

Overview
GasBuddy is an application that allows you to report & track gas prices in your area. Gas stations are located by GPS or by manually entering a location into the search bar. As a bonus and to encourage users to report gas prices, you receive points for each price you report. Points can be used to "purchase" entries into a weekly draw for a $250 pre-paid gas card.



Location
When you launch the device it will usually try and pinpoint your location via cell tower location. Hopefully not too long afar that it will find your GeoLocation, and finally your actual GPS location. I found the cell tower location to be hit-and-miss. Sometimes it would give me gas stations that were over 15KM away (even though there was a tower within 2 blocks of my physical location), and other times it would give me stations in Ontario (I'm in British Columbia). That's not to say that cell tower location never worked, but it was very unreliable at about 50% accuracy. I'm not too familiar with the GeoLocation, as it would usually skip over that step pretty quickly. The GPS location works great about 95% of the time. There were a few times where it just couldn't seem to get a lock, but usually re-booting the app will solve that problem.

In addition to the automated location options, you can also manually input a City/Province (State)/Postal Code (Zip Code). I've personally used this feature to lookup gas prices down south to see if it's worthwhile for me to make the drive across the border. This feature could also come in handy if you were having problems getting a GPS lock.

You have the option of sorting stations by Price, Distance, or Time since last reported update. I left it at the default 'Price' setting, although my results
were populated by distance which was odd, but fine by me. You can also choose to display results in either metric or imperial measurements.



Station details
Once your location is determined, the 'Find Gas Near Me' button will bring up a list of stations in your area. The search results clearly display the price, name of the station, address, and distance to your location. By hitting the menu key you will get a list of options that include 'Report Price' and 'Show Details'. The 'Show Details' option will bring up details of when each fuel grade was last updated, and by which user. This page also displays which fuel grades are available, as well as which services are available (washroom, convenience store etc). There is also an option to upload gas station photos, although I've yet to see a station that has a photo on their profile.



Reporting prices
You can report an unlimited number of gas prices in a day, but you are capped at 750 points per day. The last person to report the price will have their username displayed by that price, as well as how long ago it was last updated. If the price has been reported within the last 24 hours (?) it will allow you to hit the 're-post' button instead of re-typing it. This is a nice feature to have, although it opens the door for people to easily re-post prices without verifying them (just to get points/awards), which could result in incorrect prices being reported. After 24 hours (?) the price goes blank if it hasn't had an update.



Awards
In order to encourage users to report gas prices, you will earn 150 points for each price you report, up to a daily maximum of 750 points. For every 1,000 points you collect, you can enter yourself into a weekly draw for a $250 pre-paid gas card (depending how many points you started the week off with, you could earn as many as 6 entries per week). Although I noticed in the winners list that there seems to be a 3 week gap between the last 2 winners. I'll give them the benefit of doubt and just assume they haven't updated the list. Each price you report gets you 150 points; in other words if you report 4 prices at one station you will get 600 points in one shot! You can choose to enter the draw every time you earn 1,000 points, or you can opt to save up your points for a few weeks and receive extra entries on the week that you're feeling lucky. The choice is yours!



In addition to getting yourself into the weekly draw, there are also various virtual awards you can earn by reporting prices. Although the awards are nothing more than a status symbol, it does encourage users to use the application regularly. I will post all the award levels in the next post so that I can avoid cluttering up the original post.

Final verdict
Prizes aside, this application definitely gets a thumbs up from me. It's easy to use, helps me save money on gas, allows me to make a contribution if I so choose, and has the added benefit of some incentives. Personally I think they afford to scrounge up more than 1 prize per week, but it's free, so I can't really complain. The virtual awards are a nice novelty, but I got tired of it pretty quickly and basically just report enough to get my 750 points per day. I think a daily point cap is needed in order to avoid people reporting false prices just to get points (there's no validation), but at the same time I think they need to come up with some better incentives if they want to keep people interested.

[DennyCrane]

As discussed, here are the award levels:

Reporter
Level 1 Report 1 price
Level 2 Report 50 prices
Level 3 Report 500 prices
Level 4 Report 1000 prices
Level 5 Report 10000 prices

Iron Man
Level 1 Report a gas price on 5 consecutive days
Level 2 Report a gas price on 50 consecutive days
Level 3 Report a gas price on 100 consecutive days
Level 4 Report a gas price on 365 consecutive days

Explorer
Level 1 Report a gas price at 10 different stations
Level 2 Report a gas price at 25 different stations
Level 3 Report a gas price at 50 different stations
Level 4 Report a gas price at 100 different stations
Level 5 Report a gas price at 1000 different stations

Perfectionist
Level 1 Report all fuel grade prices 2 times
Level 2 Report all fuel grade prices 10 times
Level 3 Report all fuel grade prices 50 times
Level 4 Report all fuel grade prices 100 times
Level 5 Report all fuel grade prices 1000 times

Adventurer
Level 1 Report a gas price in 3 different cities
Level 2 Report a gas price in 16 different cities
Level 3 Report a gas price in 50 different cities
Level 4 Report a gas price in 100 different cities
Level 5 Report a gas price in 500 different cities

Pioneer
Level 1 Report a gas price in 2 different states
Level 2 Report a gas price in 5 different states
Level 3 Report a gas price in 15 different states
Level 4 Report a gas price in 51 different states
Level 5 Report a gas price in 62 different states
*A state is defined as: The 50 states; Washington, DC; Canada's 10 provinces and three territories.

Night Owl
Level 1 Report price(s) at 5 stations between the hours of 12am and 6am
Level 2 Report price(s) at 20 stations between the hours of 12am and 6am
Level 3 Report price(s) at 50 stations between the hours of 12am and 6am
Level 4 Report price(s) at 100 stations between the hours of 12am and 6am
Level 5 Report price(s) at 500 stations between the hours of 12am and 6am

Sunday Driver
Level 1 Report 5 gas prices on Sunday
Level 2 Report 20 gas prices on Sunday
Level 3 Report 50 gas prices on Sunday
Level 4 Report 100 gas prices on Sunday
Level 5 Report 500 gas prices on Sunday

Commuter
Level 1 Report a gas price in both the AM and PM of a 24 hour period on 2 consecutive days
Level 2 Report a gas price in both the AM and PM of a 24 hour period on 5 consecutive days
Level 3 Report a gas price in both the AM and PM of a 24 hour period on 25 consecutive days
Level 4 Report a gas price in both the AM and PM of a 24 hour period on 100 consecutive days
Level 5 Report a gas price in both the AM and PM of a 24 hour period on 365 consecutive days

[DubDub]

is this a Canadian app or is there a US version? Is it in BB App World?

[DennyCrane]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry Bold 9900: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9900; en) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.190 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

is this a Canadian app or is there a US version? Is it in BB App World?

It's in AppWorld, and it's available in Canada and the US. When I search US stations it shows prices in gallons, and in Canada it's in litres.

[CGY Guy]

It's a very handy app to have, especially while on the road.

[Sam73065]

I use the android version and I love the app. You can search by zip code too, so if you live in a large city or metro area, it allows you to search not only where you are, but where you're headed for, which is useful for narrowing down where to purchase your gas.

[Chris_nvwssv]

Wow this is freaking sweet. I definitely am going to check this out soon. Glad to know it works in Vancouver, as I see some Vancouver addresses in the screenshots. Would check it out right now, but my gas tank is still on full Would be nice to pay a little less, seeing as I comute a lot.

Excellent that it isn't just Blackberry too, and that it works over multiple platforms, increasing its effectiveness.