JL5
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Posts: 479 
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Post by JL5 on Apr 22, 2023 23:46:17 GMT -5
I have a couple of users on my local boards who have 1,200 - 1,500 gas price postings a month.
It seems excessive but hey, maybe they're uber drivers, driving around all day reporting prices??
The problem is, I often find their prices are often wrong.
Recently, one of these yahoo's updated the prices for a station that I had just reported its prices for that morning with newer updated pricing. I drove by the same station later that afternoon and found that the station had not changed their prices as the reporter earlier had updated. So, I went ahead and posted the correct prices. An hour later, the same yahoo puts back the incorrect prices. He then updated the prices a few hours later with the same incorrect prices. This user is one of those users with 1,200 - 1,500 price postings a month (approx 40 prices posted a day). He often posts all over the area so I know its not someone who is just trying to manipulate business to another gas station.
Of course, I've reported this user to GB - they've done nothing an allow him to keep posting prices, correct or not...
Today, while looking in the app at the local leader board, I noted this one user has 12,465 price postings for the past 30 days!!
That's roughly 415 price postings a day - assuming someone sleeps 8hrs, that's roughly 26 price postings every hour for each hour during a 16hour day!
I'll have to check this person's price reporting (they don't normally report on my normal treks so I'll have to go out of my way a bit to check their accuracy.
Does anyone else have a prolific price poster in their area??
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Post by catskillhiker on Apr 27, 2023 7:11:45 GMT -5
Does anyone else have a prolific price poster in their area?? I am a prolific price poster. For a variety of legitimate reasons. My GB app currently indicates 17,989 posts in the last 30 days. It has also been well over 20,000 for several extended periods of time.
There are multiple members of my extended family that all use my Catskillhiker GB user id. We live and travel in diverse locations around the US, and do occasionally travel through / into Canada.
We tend to "police" the gas price posts in our areas. We frequently travel into stations to correct the outrageously wrong prices that are frequently posted, and that get reposted by the "price apes" that are completing various challenges, especially the levels of that dreadful Grand Master Challenge.
It often takes multiple posts of each individual gas grade to correct the outrageously wrong price posts. The details on how much you can "step up" or "step down" the individual prices varies greatly in different parts of the US and Canada (depending on how volatile the price swings are in each area).
For the record the GB philosophy on price posts is for each GB member to merely post what they see. And over time the "correct" prices will emerge from "crowd sourcing". My experience is that rarely happens in correcting outrageously bad price posts. There are simply too many "price apes" on the GB boards. So I have employed and perfected the "step up" and "step down" methodology at correcting bad gas price price posts. The worst cases are impossible to resolve at the station. We merely write down the correct prices, and resolve them ASAP at home so that we can verify each of the "steps up/down" via the full GB website (via the map feature and/or my many favorite stations lists). And yes, we legitimately use a fake GPS app on our phones to resolve some of the more distant stations (from our homes).
For the record, I first learned of the "step up/down" technique many years ago on the old GB website forums where it was mentioned by another experienced GB member. I have used and perfected that essential technique ever since.
All of this results in the high number of price posts on my GB user id. Also FWIW, I also only sleep/doze about 2 hours per day. Thankfully I am happily vocationally retired from any job, but I am also happily avocationally engaged.
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JL5
Full Member
Posts: 479
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Post by JL5 on May 22, 2023 23:27:40 GMT -5
Well the prolific poster decided to tread into my territory this weekend and made multiple incorrect postings to stations in my local vicinity.
Gas prices in my area do not fluctuate like they do in the midwest, so any price change is usually not crazy like the midwest and tends to stay the same for days/weeks in some cases...as long as no one blows something up in the middle east.
After taking screenshots of the prolific price posters price posts...I went down to the stations he reported on and took pics of the actual prices on the pump and updated the prices. A few hours later, the prolific price poster went in and updated the prices to the wildly incorrect prices he had been posting all weekend. I kept fixing the prices and a few hours later, he was re-posting the incorrect prices.
Then, overnight, his buddy account (probably the same guy) - another prolific price poster was also posting the incorrect prices. I took more screenshots. Later this morning I swung by the gas stations and verified that the prices had not changed and again took pics of the pump prices and corrected the posts.
I sent all of this in to GB and they responded that they put some sort of GPS lock on the users account so that they have to be near the station to update a price there. Hopefully this works.
We have another prolific price poster in my area starting up...out of the blue, another price poster has almost 19,000 price updates in the last 30 days.
As catskillhiker explains above, some have valid reasons...but I think that is only valid if it is long standing and consistent as he explained. My local users are just new users out of the blue.
And yeah, catskillhiker, the GB Philosophy on prices just naturally correcting themselves...in theory they should but often not as you eluded to.
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Post by jayrad1957 (Los Angeles) on May 26, 2023 16:32:56 GMT -5
Is the Grand Master Challenge still active? I haven't heard about that challenge in years.
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JL5
Full Member
Posts: 479
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Post by JL5 on May 26, 2023 22:53:24 GMT -5
Is the Grand Master Challenge still active? I haven't heard about that challenge in years.
I believe the Grand Master Challenge is still in play. Every now and then, a user will pop on my local board with 100,000+ points accumulated over the last month. I'm usually in the top 3-5 points earning balance in my area, w/approx. a consistent 75k-76k points earning balance, all throughout the month. I earn my points on a consistent basis - max at 2,025 a day (along w/whatever misc. challenge comes along)...and I earn my weekly & monthly challenges around the same time each week/month...so I'm usually sitting at 75-76k points earning on a 30 day lookback. When I see someone in my area earning over 100k+ points, I assume they are getting that larger chunk of points from the Grand Master Challenge points - as they usually fall off the local points leader board 30 days later. |
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