In Shift To Daily Petrol, Diesel Rate Changes, What's In It For Consumers

Oil marketing companies have begun revision of petrol and diesel prices on a daily basis from today. Extending a pilot project in five cities to the rest of the country, the petrol and diesel retailers will now revise the prices effective 6 am every day. Indian Oil Corp, the country's largest fuel retailer, has said that under the new system of daily price revisions, even the smallest change in international oil prices will be passed down to consumers. It has said the daily price revision is an initiative to ensure the best possible prices to the customers as well as improved transparency in the pricing mechanism.

"With fuel prices set to be revised on a daily basis from 06.00 am daily effective June 16, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. has successfully tested all the protocol systems related to dealers and customers to ensure successful roll out of dynamic pricing structure from tomorrow," Indian Oil said in a press release dated June 15.

Indian Oil has announced arrangements towards a seamless transition to daily price revisions, from the fortnightly revision system followed earlier. Before June 16, state-run OMCs - Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum - reviewed the prices on the 1st and 16th of each month depending on global crude oil and forex rates.

FOR CUSTOMERS

Website: Consumers can check daily petrol and diesel prices online by visiting the Indian Oil website. Once on the website, you can use the 'RO Locator' tool to locate the Indian Oil retail outlet nearest to them based on your location. Indian Oil has said prices will vary slightly from outlets to outlets.

The website displays prices of various products sold.

SMS: You can check prices through an SMS service provided by Indian Oil. For this, you need to send an SMS in the prescribed format to fetch the current rates applicable at a dealer.

SMS RSP< SPACE >DEALER CODE to 92249-92249

"The Dealer Code of each petrol pump would be prominently displayed in the petrol pump premises," IOC has said.

Mobile app: Indian Oil's mobile app, called "Fuel@IOC - IndianOil", enables customers to check current prices. This mobile application by Indian Oil is available on both Google Play and Apple Store, for Android and iPhone smartphone users respectively.

Helpline

Indian Oil has set up a customer care helpline 1800-2333-555 to lodge grievances related to daily price revision. "In case of any discrepancy customers can access Indian Oil easily as all its petrol pumps prominently display mobile numbers of the concerned Field Officers," Indian Oil said.

Customers also log in to the website iocl.com to submit any grievance. This can be done through the 'We're Listening' section, a link to which is provided on the home page.

FOR DEALERS

Control rooms: Indian Oil has set up 24x7 control rooms to address dealers' queries. Indian Oil, which has announced 87 such control rooms, will address technical glitches/system issues that may arise at the dealer's end from June 16. These control rooms are manned by Indian Oil officials from technical and information systems teams, it said.

Communication platforms: Indian Oil said it has successfully tested new facilities under which it will communicate prices to dealers. This will be done in four modes: customized SMSes, emails, mobile app and web portal)

"Since June 12, Indian Oil is conducting trial runs across India for communicating petrol and diesel prices through SMS, E-mail and Customer Portal (Xsparsh where dealer can log in to see current and previous day's prices) to 26,000 plus dealers," it said.

"The trial runs have also helped ensuring dealer data correctness - viz mobile number and e-mail ids. This has ensured 100% accuracy in communicating daily price change to every dealer."