by John Keller | Dec 31, 2018 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team is excited to announce the general availability of PriceAdvantage version 2018.5 on December 31. With this release, PriceAdvantage delivered multiple usability enhancements based on customer input, including making it easier to deliver market restorations. At the time of this post we have scheduled six customers to be upgraded, with many more scheduled to upgrade in the coming weeks.
This is our fifth major release this year, and also the third release in three months. The PriceAdvantage team uses Agile software development best practices to rapidly build and deliver iterative releases throughout the year, always staying in close contact with the latest needs of our customers.
Please contact your Account Representative, or anyone on our Support team, to learn more about this new release, to schedule a demonstration, and to arrange for an upgrade. Upgrades typically take less than one hour.
by John Keller | Nov 5, 2018 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team is excited to announce the general availability of PriceAdvantage version 2018.4 on November 5. With this release, PriceAdvantage added finer granularity of control over store access, made it easier to time market restorations, and increased performance in a number of key areas. At the time of this post we have scheduled five customers to be upgraded, with many more scheduled to upgrade in the coming weeks.
This is our fourth major release this year, and also the second release in two months. The PriceAdvantage team uses Agile software development best practices to rapidly build and deliver iterative releases throughout the year, always staying in close contact with the latest needs of our customers.
Please contact your Account Representative, or anyone on our Support team, to learn more about this new release, to schedule a demonstration, and to arrange for an upgrade. Upgrades typically take less than one hour.
by John Keller | Sep 17, 2018 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News
The PriceAdvantage team is excited to announce the general availability of PriceAdvantage version 2018.3 on September 14. With this release, PriceAdvantage adds Retalix to our list of supported POS systems, and brings the total count of our out-of-the-box POS’s to 11. We have also included a long list of usability improvements, all of which directly came from customer feedback. At the time of this post we have scheduled seven customers to be upgraded, with many more scheduled to upgrade in the coming weeks.
This is our third major release this year, and also the third release in four months. The PriceAdvantage team uses Agile software development best practices to rapidly build and deliver iterative releases throughout the year, always staying in close contact with the latest needs of our customers.
Please contact your Account Representative, or anyone on our Support team, to learn more about this new release, to schedule a demonstration, and to arrange for an upgrade. Upgrades typically take less than one hour.
by John Keller | Jun 21, 2018 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News
The PriceAdvantage team is excited to announce the general availability of PriceAdvantage version 2018.2 on June 21. Once again, this new release includes enhanced capabilities to business strategies. There are also improvements to the maps user interface, and there is richer information about competitors. All the new features in this release came from customer feedback. At the time of this post we have scheduled seven customers to be upgraded, with many more scheduled to upgrade in July.
One of our customers recently told us, “We really enjoy working with you and your team on product improvements. You are delivering big time for us!”. Feedback like that is what motivates us even more.
This is our second major release this year, and also the second release in two months. The PriceAdvantage team uses Agile software development best practices to rapidly build and deliver iterative releases throughout the year, always staying in close contact with the latest needs of our customers.
Please contact your Account Representative, or anyone on our Support team, to learn more about this new release, to schedule a demonstration, and to arrange for an upgrade. Upgrades typically take an hour or less.
by John Keller | May 18, 2018 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team is excited to announce the general availability of PriceAdvantage version 2018.1.1 on May 14. This new release provides more powerful business rules for strategies, as well as improvements to the user interface based on customer feedback. All of these ideas came directly from PriceAdvantage customers. At the time of this post we have upgraded four customers, with many more scheduled to upgrade before the end of May.
One of our customers recently said “One thing I can say about PriceAdvantage – new versions just plain work.” He added that he can’t say that about all his vendors.
This is our first major release this year. The PriceAdvantage team uses Agile software development best practices to rapidly build and deliver iterative releases throughout the year, always staying in close contact with the latest needs of our customers.
Please contact your Account Representative, or anyone on our Support team, to learn more about this new release, to schedule a demonstration, and to arrange for an upgrade. Upgrades typically take an hour or less.
by John Keller | Nov 1, 2017 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, Industry News, Price Gouging
CSP reports that the Texas Attorney General has accused more than 100 fuel retailers of price gouging during the state of disaster declared for Hurricane Harvey. The Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) prohibits anyone from taking advantage of a disaster declared by the governor and selling or leasing fuel or other necessities for “excessive or exorbitant prices”. The law authorizes the attorney general to sue offenders for price gouging and seek refunds for consumers, as well as to enforce civil penalties of up to $20,000 per violation. There are also extra fines of up to $250,000 for incidents involving a consumer who is 65 years or older.
Other states have similar laws:
- In Georgia, gas stations must charge the same price they did immediately before the state of emergency unless there’s “an increase in cost of the goods or services to the person selling the goods or services or an increase in the cost of transporting the goods or services into the area.”
- In West Virginia, according to the Attorney General, state law says “you take the date of the emergency declaration, go back 10 days, and whatever the price was then, you can raise it 10% before we get interested.”
- In Virginia, the law states that businesses can be charged with price gouging if they charge a price that is “unconscionable” when compared to the average price of the same product during the emergency declaration. The term “unconscionable” is not defined.
- In New Jersey, raising fuel prices multiple times in one day is illegal, and could result in fines of $1500 each. The State Office of Weights and Measures also investigates fuel retailers who raise prices more than 10%, what New Jersey calls price gouging.
Fuel Pricing solutions such as PriceAdvantage can help in situations like these in three ways:
- Keep control of fuel price changes at Headquarters. The Fuel Price Management solution PriceAdvantage can be configured to remove the Store Manager from the fuel price change process, and initiate all fuel price changes only at headquarters. This means no unauthorized fuel price changes starting at the store.
- Set price change thresholds. PriceAdvantage allows price changes to be kept below the set threshold, meaning a price change can never be more than the set percentage over the current price. In this case, if the threshold is set to 9%, any price change of more than 9% would be rejected as unauthorized.
- Reduce audit time. PriceAdvantage can shorten a fuels price audit from days spent tracking down stacks of spreadsheets, to a few minutes needed to run a built-in fuel pricing history report. The PriceAdvantage solution also provides a complete audit trail of retail site and competitor fuel prices, cost, and margin (both actual and replacement), on a daily basis. This makes it quick to respond to auditors who make accusations of fuel price gouging.
These are situations when a PriceAdvantage system pays for itself many times over.
