YanisKyr wrote:Hi guys, with the opportunity of Topaz re-branding to Circle K, let's review the list of Gas station brands.

I'm in two minds about Topaz and Circle K. Although I haven't seen many petrol stations with Circle K branding yet, I presume all the Topaz stations are going to change eventually, so it would be handy if they could all be changed over in one go by Waze HQ rather than us having to manually change each one.

Maybe we should wait a month or so (or however long it takes for the majority of Topaz stations to change their branding) and then get all Topaz stations changed to Circle K in one go by HQ. Thoughts?

++David

YanisKyr wrote:I personally never saw the below - does anyone know if they're still operating?
ENI
Excol
Xpress Stop

ENI is an Italian brand - not sure if they've ever operated here.

Excol still exists as a company (see here) and they're based in Sligo. I don't know whether they still run petrol stations under that brand though.

Xpress Stop rings a bell with me, but maybe they just operate convenience stores in petrol stations, rather than being a petrol brand. It's possible they made it onto the brand list because some independent petrol stations were franchisees of Xpress Stop for the shop in the petrol station, and hence somebody thought that was also the petrol brand.

It *might* be worth getting a list of all petrol stations and assigned brands from Waze HQ - if any of these obscure brands don't exist then we could consider removing these brands.

++David

YanisKyr wrote:About 30h later, the script has only scanned 11% of the whole island.

All to get a list of petrol stations? Hmmm.

It might be worth asking Tim if his crawler bot can be extended for petrol stations while it's working - it does plenty of other stuff already.

++David

YanisKyr wrote:- No ENI gas stations.
- Only one Excol (which doesn't exist on google maps) https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=row&lo ... 503.127249
- Only one Xpress (which is a Topaz) https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=row&lo ... 98.4859525

I think we are safe to remove these 3 brands from the list, what are your thoughts?

Well, ENI can definitely go. For the Gala Xpress in Monasterevin: that's listed on the Gala Store Locator, and my understanding is that it's a convenience store brand, not a petrol brand, so that can go too.

As for Excol: it looks like Excol went out of business in 2016, but that doesn't mean they weren't revived or that nobody bought the brand name. That particular station is mentioned here as having closed around the same time. I can't find any other evidence of that brand since 2016, so although I'm not certain that they're gone completely, my inclination is to remove them from the list.

HOWEVER, I do know they're Sligo based, and that Arthur has connections with Sligo, so it might be worth asking him first.

++David

YanisKyr wrote:I've updated the spreadsheet if you want to take another look before I send it off to HQ. One thing I do need help deciding is Top. Which is trading as "top oil" (all lower case on their logo) - shall we normalise it to Top Oil?

Wow, you tried to contact all of the Excol ones? Pretty good!

As for "Top"/"top oil"/"Top Oil", I'd be inclined to leave that as "Top" (no "oil"/"Oil"), both because it looks the most tight, because "oil" doesn't appear on their logo. I know the logo is all lower-case now, but that could change if/when they ever change the logo (I vaguely remember it being "Top" years ago, before the current logo)

++David

YanisKyr wrote:The oil part is in their logo actually - I think it sneaked-in with a recent re-design along with the color stripes. Take a look https://www.top.ie/

Is that in the logo on the petrol stations though? They also supply home heating oil, which is a big part of their website.

I still vote for "Top" as the brand, until we know for sure that "Oil" appears on the petrol station branding.

++David

YanisKyr wrote:I know I'm flooding this post, but seems they use "top oil" on the sign above the prices, and "top" on every other point they want a logo.

https://goo.gl/maps/BgeAvtYe7rJ2

Hmm - good point.

However, I still vote for just "Top", partly because that's more visible than the "Oil" part (it's in white, rather than green on a green background), partly because the word "Oil" is redundant, partly because "Top" is the only thing that appears in *all* their signs and logos, and partly because I suspect that most people would just say "Top" when referring to that brand.

++David

YanisKyr wrote:I vote for "Top Oil" mainly two reasons.
1. match their company name and main logo
2. anything that is 3 or less characters I (and some scripts/tools) find too short

Stan also vouched for "Top Oil" - do we need more votes?

I feel outnumbered now - if we find another opinion there's the risk we'll then be deadlocked.

Anyway, in my memory (when Top first showed up as a petrol retailer, maybe 35 years ago), the signs then just said "Top". I reckon it's only "Top Oil" because they also sell heating oil as well as having a petrol station chain. Aside from that, I vote "Top" because:

1. It's what appears on the petrol station signs.
2. When "Oil" (sometimes) appears, it's not very visible (green on green).
3. "Top" is what people would answer if you were to ask them "where did you get your petrol today?"
4. "Top" is no shorter than another brand: "Emo".
5. I suggest that if any scripts or tools find the name too short, such script/tools are broken.
6. Names that are acronyms are often just three characters long (granted, there aren't that many petrol station brands like this).
7. The "Oil" in the name is redundant.

How about this: can we find petrol station brands from other (English speaking) countries and see how many of them leave off redundant (in my opinion ) words from petrol station brands, and how many leave them in?

YanisKyr wrote:Also, Petrogas is the mother company of Applegreen so that should be removed too.

Agreed on that point.

++David

YanisKyr wrote:The renamed brands appear blank in WME while the app still shows the old name. HQ are investigating this.

I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but I was at this Topaz petrol station that shows as TOPAZ in the app and has a blank brand in WME and when I tried to enter new fuel prices (139.5 for diesel and 149.5 for petrol) I was politely informed that my prices were invalid.

I wonder if there's a correlation between this failure, old brands ("TOPAZ") and blank brands in WME - or whether 139.5/149.5 is too far away from 1.3 and 1.4 to be considered valid.

Anybody else seen this kind of failure? If it's commonplace it would explain why prices seems to be being updated so slowly...

++David

YanisKyr wrote:Hey David, I got this "Uh-oh!" message the other day, and coincidentally it was also a TOPAZ with the old name. Was this the message you were getting?

Since then, I changed the name to Topaz to see how it looks as it's on my commute, so I might get a chance to try it again one of these days.

No, it wasn't the "Uh-oh!" message that I got - it was more informative than that, but it was complaining that the values I was trying to enter were invalid.

I considered contacting Waze HQ to make sure that the ranges of valid prices had been updated (multiplied by 100) at the same time that the price format was changed, but I notice that plenty of stations have had their prices updated, presumably with no problems. Many of these have similar prices (149.9) too. One difference (apart from the "TOPAZ"/blank/"Topaz" brand issue) is that the prices I was trying to enter ended in ".5" (139.5 and 149.5).

++David