Opinion: What Gull effect?

What Gull effect? Day one of Gull Te Awamutu - and the highly anticpated new player hasn't brought it's 'A game'. Photos / Dean Taylor

Te Awamutu has been looking forward to the ‘Gull effect’ for literally years - and today the new station opened and in my opinion it was completely underwhelming.

The new Gull station has been one of Te Awamutu’s worst-kept secrets for three or four years.

Red tape seemed to be conspiring against the town ever having a Gull station. Then Waitomo fuel stole a march by picking up the former Z Alexandra St station, and when it opened low prices and a fun atmosphere had motorists queuing.

By contrast, Gull finally opened for business this morning with prices firmly set alongside Te Awamutu’s other six operators, and business looked slow.

Considering Gull doesn’t operate any loyalty or discount programmes, their 247.7c for 91 and 277.7 for diesel, the two most popular fuels, didn’t create any buzz at all - apart from the uproar and complaints via social media.

To be fair, the Gull prices are the cheapest before any discounts, bonus points or other schemes. But the 91 price is matched by Pak’nSave with a discount voucher, and diesel works out cheaper.

Other discount and reward systems make the prices much or a muchness - so motorists are hardly going to be lured away from their current favourites for little or no savings.

Hopefully, Gull will see the error of its ways and start a price war in Te Awamutu that will bring about some real savings.

We don’t want Gull just to join the party - we want them to be the life and soul.