Petrol station forced to sell most expensive fuel in Perth after accidentally misreporting to Price Watch

A Perth petrol station has been forced to sell the most expensive diesel in Western Australia after an employee made a typing error that added $1 of value onto the already expensive fuel. Independent fuel retailer Burk was forced to sell diesel at nearly $4 a litre at its Cannington petrol station on Tuesday because of strict laws enforced by the WA petrol watchdog FuelWatch. Since the fuel crisis began, individual petrol stations have been forced to lock in the following day’s petrol prices with FuelWatch in order to prevent artificial inflation. Burk managing director Umar Farooq told 9News that “multiple calls and emails” were sent to FuelWatch to try to rectify the issue, but nothing could be done. In a Facebook post made on Tuesday, Burk Cannington said the mistake was due to “a genuine typographical error” during their daily FuelWatch submission. “Despite being an obvious mistake, FuelWatch has strictly refused to allow any correction and have clearly told us to sell diesel at the advertised price. This leaves us with only two options: sell diesel at an extremely inflated and unrealistic price or shut diesel completely for the day,” it said. “Both options are completely unfair and do not serve the public in any way. It is extremely disappointing to see a government system act in such a rigid manner, especially when everyday customers are the ones impacted the most.” In a workaround to the issue, the petrol station chose to put a one-day discount of $1.04 on the diesel bowser “We were told we can’t sell it at the price other than what’s been reported,” Mr Farooq said. The employee responsible for the error is not expected to face any disciplinary action. WA Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti said the incident was “very unfortunate” and she was happy to take the issue up “with the relevant ministers”.