Discussion on gas stations
 

I'll start off with a bit of a story:

Last week I had a lot of bad luck with my BRZ. On Thursday my battery went dead for no good reason leading me to believe that it had gone bad, which meant I had to miss work and take it in to the dealership. It had indeed gone bad and I got it replaced under warranty (the only good part of this story). Two days later I'm trying to get to work again and the car can't get ignition, I heard it trying to crank but it would just sputter out. With the engine being completely stock and the only thing being changed recently was the battery, I immediately assumed that it was causing the issue. I had a tow truck take it back to the dealership while a friend drove me to work. I was certain that it was some sort of electrical issue with the new battery that was causing the spark plugs to not fire, or maybe a bad alternator, but the real culprit ended up being something completely unrelated. As it turned out, I had filled up the tank the night before at a Shell station really close to my house, and apparently the gas tanks there had been heavily diluted with water, so much so that according to the Subaru technician about 70% of what was in my tank was water. As you can guess this meant that my entire fuel system had been corrupted and a lot of labor was needed to fix it, which of course meant a big service bill. I'm still without my car and having my friend drive me around, and I'm currently trying to get the Shell station to admit fault and pay for my expenses but they are being difficult. They claimed that they checked the fuel 2 days prior to the incident and that it checked out, and when I asked if there had been any other reports or complaints from customers that day, they wouldn't answer. And as the dealership won't release the car without receiving payment, I'm in a real bind right now.

That's not the point of this whole post, though. One thing I remembered about my stop at the Shell station was that the fuel was pumping very slow. I tried one pump and it was coming out so slowly that after at least 2 minutes I had only gotten 0.3 of a gallon, so I moved to another one which pumped faster but still slower than normal. I did a bit of searching to see if this was related to the diluted fuel or just a coincidence, and I read one thread where someone claimed that the pumps have a sort of "dilution detection system" which is basically an apparatus around the tube that expands when it detects water or some other foreign liquid and restricts the flow of the fuel. I don't know what to think about this theory because I've dealt with slow pumps in the past and never had my car break down on me, so I'm wondering if anyone here knows if this is true or not, or can actually explain why some pumps are slower than others.

I've also heard other conspiracies about gas stations, like how the advertised "cheap" price is only given on half of the pumps in a station, and that those pumps are programmed to flow a bit slower than the others so that people will be less inclined to use them, and instead use the "faster" pumps with the higher price. Another one I've heard is that many stations purposefully dilute their fuel to a certain degree to save money, which wouldn't surprise me at all if it turned out to be true.

What do you guys think? Any of you have an interesting gas station tale?

Ok not quite THAT interesting, but ive noticed everytime I would fill up with shell (every now and then) I would get a CEL. Would go away after I would drain the tank and go fill it up with chevron.

Moral of the story; I dont like shell. Neither does my car.

Also, go get a statement from your dealership in writing, get a sample of that gas and threaten to take shell to court. It'd be tough, but you already have a certified mechanic at a dealership saying your fuel system got wrecked.

If formal complaints have been lodged by other people that had a similar problem they should be on file with your states dept of weights and measures.

It's always worth getting a receipt for gas and hanging onto it until you're sure the gas is burning well.

http://thegarage.jalopnik.com/why-yo...get-1648937540

I'm fortunate in being around gas stations that are heavily trafficked, less chance for fuckery.

Bad gas is a risk at ANY station or brand not restricted to just one. It happens. Your best chance of reducing that risk is to use stations that see a lot of traffic all the time.


70% Water? Really? I would like to see how they determined that. You wouldn't have got a block from the station so it would have had to be really really close. Clearing the system would be relatively easy since they could just pump out the tank and disconnect the lines to drain out the rest. Obviously you had a water issue but I am not convinced that the tech didn't over state the severity of it.


I can not speak for NC but most places have some pretty strict requirements for checking the fuel in their storage tank so for them to say it was checked 2 days before was probably accurate. Believe it or not every State/Province will have a legal limit of how much water is allowed to be in the gas. That is how common it is.


Gas pumps are exactly that, pumps. Some are slower than others for many reasons and none of those involve scams. I have never in my life seen stations with different prices for the same level of fuel on different pumps. It would be a very poor scam to try this as people would figure it out in a hurry.


To the best of my knowledge and a quick search through official sites there is no water detection system in existence that slows down a pump if there is water present. What would the practical application of slowing down the pump even be?


Purposely diluting gas with water would just be plain stupid. The water can cause more expensive issues with the pumps than any slight increase in profit would warrant. Yes, water happens and yes a certain amount is even permitted but to add water for the pennies made a gallon would not be worth the risk. No matter what an issue is you can find somebody on the internet that says it is a conspiracy and can make their point seem very convincing unless you read around what they are saying.


You may have a tough time going after Shell. Most gas stations are independently owned and operated and even though they sell Shell gas that does not mean that Shell is responsible for them nor their actions. If the station can produce inspection records (real or not) and a test of the fuel in their tanks comes up OK then you are pretty much screwed as far as action goes.

What @Tcoat said....

In addition, if you are really concerned, it's easy enough to test. Fuel has smaller molecules than water or debris so there are lots of ways to strain test it. This is common in small plane aviation. Fuel tanks are tested before every flight for water using a strainer similar to this GATS Jar.

Nearly all fuel has some level of water in it. Just condensation in the storage tank or your fuel tank will add water. That is why it is normal practice to always fill the tank of a small plane before you park it overnight.

Parked for a few hours with half a tank, condensation will form, and water being heavier, will separate into the bottom of the tanks. What happens in a small plane is that you'll have enough good fuel to run for start-up and take-off, then you will hit water in the lines at just the "perfect" time for a very short flight.

If the pump did have a "water detection system" it would most likely be a "water straining system" because it would not be that difficult to engineer following the same process as the fuel tester I mentioned above, or a fuel strainer which also filters out water and other solid contaminants.

As @Tcoat mentioned the real risk comes from using low turn-over stations. They are the ones most likely to have half full tanks underground where condensation has a chance to introduce water. That's a real risk in aviation if you fly "back country" or to a rural airport with only a handful of flights and fuel purchases a week.

And...
We require Premium fuel which is only 11% of the fuel sold. This means that the fuel sits in the underground tank much longer that Regular fuel which in turn increases the risk of water in the tank (not to mention the decrease in octane as it sits there).

Thanks for all the concern guys but I'll somehow get this squared away. I had the technicians log a sample of the fuel the first time they called me, so I'll have that to show the station along with my bill.

@Tcoat I was able to get back that night because I filled up with just less than a quarter of a tank left and then drove home straight after, so the water didn't have time to settle. Draining the system is simple enough but the technician mentioned how they'd have to get someone to come pick up the bad fuel and dispose of it and that would the most expensive thing. They're also replacing the fuel pump which in this scenario is not under warranty. Once I see the fuel sample I'll let you know if the technician exaggerated or not.

The gas station I went to has been my regular for years, and it's one of the busiest ones I've seen in the area. A lot of trucks stop there in the early hours of the day and there are times where people are literally queued up to get a pump. I was very shocked when I found out about the fuel because I had always thought of this station as reliable.

Once I have the bill and fuel sample, my mission will be to get them to admit to other customer complaints and then I'll have 'em.

Hey! I lived in Matthews until August before moving to Nashville. Nice area. I always went to the Exxon on the corner of Mint Hill Road and and 74 south, just before the interstate, and the Exxon on E Independence at the corner of Unionville - Indian Trail Road. Never had any complaints and now I always use Exxon stations - the bigger ones in high traffic areas.

I really don't trust the smaller stations.

I can't image a large conglomerate like Shell or Exxon wouldn't have strict systems in place to ensure only their branded gas is being sold at stations with their name. But....

The smaller ones? Dunno.

The margin on gasoline for the station owner is like $.01 per gallon, so possibly there are stations that do this, at least to a small degree. A station holds 6,000 gallons of fuel, or somewhere around there, right? If you dilute a few hundred gallons, that would be a lot more profit, and considering modern cars have fuel systems that will compensate to a degree to the kind of gas in tank, well, who would ever know.

Maybe someone didn't know the station tank hadn't been filled, or they were waiting for a delivery and went ahead and put water in. Maybe you just got there at the wrong time.

Don't want to fuel the conspiracy though.

Not trying to debate with you and of course I don't have all the info but if you filled up with a 1/4 tank and your fuel was 70% water then you either had a pile of water in the tank to start with or you filled up with 100% water. The math doesn't work and the car should not have run at all since the very act of pumping gas in would stir up any water. It wouldn't be settled out on the bottom of the tank until the car had sat still for an hour or so but you would still have had issues if in fact it was 70% water. Unless it was a long term thing the fuel pump would not have been damaged in any way by water passing through it so not sure why it had to be replaced. Disposal of 10 gallons of water contaminated fuel would cost about $50 - $100 max so that shouldn't be a huge expense.


The sample will be telling and the bill will show you bought gas there but good luck getting them to say that other people had issues! Let us know how you make out this is indeed an interesting one.

So you put 200 gallons of water in to make an additional $2 and risk damaging your $10,000 equipment? Stations adding water to stretch fuel is an urban legend. Yes, a small station stands a larger risk of having water but that is a result of less product turn over and shoddy maintenance practices not some weird ass scam.

I'm sure you're right and that the technician exaggerated, but even if it was a high percentage of water it wouldn't have broken the car during that drive. The station is literally 3 miles from my house and I had around a quarter of a tank of good fuel still in there so that small bit was running my engine on the 5 minute drive home, then the water settled in overnight. As for the fuel pump, I'm guessing it got flooded from the multiple times I tried to start the car (since as I said in the first post, I believed that the battery was the problem at the time).

The dealership said that the new fuel pump won't arrive till Thursday so I won't see the records until then. In the meantime, I'm going to find out if there's anyone higher up I can talk to in the gas station, maybe find the supplier. Again, this is not a small station in a remote area. It gets a lot of activity during the day and I've been getting gas almost exclusively there for 3 years. I'm sure that other people got screwed that day like I did, I just have to get them to admit it.

Maybe my math is wrong, but wouldn't 200 gallons of water (gas prices at 2.50) = 500$? in more profit because the price of water is basically nill.

Which is why I think someone would do it.

Duh ya! I was thinking pure profit not whole price. Still doesn't make sense though. The risk is far greater than the reward.

It would take a LOT of sales to reach 200 gallons of water (displaced fuel). The threshold for diluting fuel with water would have to be in the thousandths per gallon, which means that in order to effectively sell 1 gallon of water you'd have to sell thousands of gallons of fuel. So basically for every 1,000+ gallons of fuel sold you'd be saving $2.50 or whatever the price of the fuel is.

It seems unrealistic but I agree that some stations probably do try it, since they're all greedy bastards.

They are businesses like any other and need to make a profit or die. Is where you work a "greedy bastard" because they make money? Are we all "greedy bastards" because we get paid so the company can make money?


Even if the are greedy that still does not mean they add water to fuel to make it go further. As you have said and everybody know (or should) water does not mix with gas. All that adding water to a storage tank would do is move the gas further up the tank. Of course if you get the last of the fuel out of the tank then you could have more water than gas but people would discover that in a hurry. If you pump that much water into your tank you are not going anyplace. So don't buy gas at stations that have stalled cars blocking the exits.


Looks like your best bet is to contact your State Inspection office and see if there were any other complaints from that day and station. The owner is never going to admit there was.


http://www.autoblog.com/2014/05/16/g...ks-with-water/


http://www.thedenverchannel.com/mone...l-gas-stations


http://www.wbtv.com/story/26096488/w...y-water-in-gas


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...nted-fuel.html


I can not find one single instance where gas was intentionally watered down. Not one.

Regulation is typically done by a state governing body, retailers/franchisers sign fuel supply agreements with sellers. Those sellers aren't necessarily the fuel creators either - they can be re-sellers (bulk plants) but could also be direct from the source, depends on the contract. Here in California at any branded station I've never heard of water in the tanks intentionally, the margins are good as they are anyways! Plus most monitoring systems ( Veeder-Root) have water measuring sensors which would throw red flags and typically notify governing bodies if those levels go beyond compliance.

SWRCB, (state water resources control board) usually manage files on issues with underground storage tank contamination. Retailers are required to pay into an insurance fund for that reason, federally mandated I believe, too. States collect this information for tax purposes, compliance is typically accompanied with that.

A typical UST (underground storage tank) installed 1990s+ are double fiber glass walled or older steel with linings (more prone to leaks/contamination) and hold around 10,000 gallons, most branded stations doing 1,5 - 2,000,000 gallons/year have between 20,000 to 36,000 gallon storage and receive payloads 2-3 times per week, so it's unlikely that fuel sits for too long for significant condensation to accumulate but Tcoat is right, there is an acceptable level which is monitored. Profit margins can range from $0.01 to $1.00+ per gallon, depends on the seller, area, competition, etc. they just can't sell below cost (may be state dependent) as far as I know.

Don't fill up when the transport truck is filling the tanks, that's prime time for debris to be kicked up and pumped.

To OP, if the problem is contaminated fuel (unlikely) and you have proof in hand from respected agent (aka dealership is willing to put it in writing for you what the conclusive cause to your problem is and put their reputation on the line, not your buddy's hunch) then go here and contact the appropriate authorities, get legal counsel first and started building a suit against the retailer for negligence/lack of compliance.

http://deq.nc.gov/about/divisions/wa...-tanks-section

For a couple hundred bucks I'd cut your losses on move on with life but if you want to go up to bat for ethical reasons, then go for it - just be weary of any counter-suit statute your state may have should you got that far, although your attorney should tell ya. Otherwise if the retailer is unwilling to refund you for the tank of gas at least or flush labor costs, assuming it was their fault, then I say boycott the station and find the silver lining somewhere and go back to enjoying life. :cheers:

This...

The fuel and the water would have to either be blended somehow or it would have to be kept agitated to remain mixed in a stationary tank.

If you put 200 gallons of water in 10,000 gallon tank of fuel it would separate and sink at the bottom in a matter of a few hours at most. You would never be able to sell the fuel fast enough to take advantage of this.

Should add, I wouldn't be surprised if someone hasn't tried it, but that doesn't mean it was very successful.

A business isn't greedy for trying to make a profit, it's greedy when it rips people off to make a profit. Maybe they don't use water but some other solvent with a closer density to that of fuel. I could just be biased against gas stations but they've always steered me off. Definitely not a place I'd want to hang around in.

I've already given up on trying to get anyone inside the Shell to admit anything. I'm going to track down their supplier and ask them if they've received complaints, and if that doesn't work then I'll do what you suggested.

I don't remember saying anything about my "buddy's hunch". My car was towed straight to the dealership where the technicians there tested the fuel and confirmed that it was heavily diluted with water. I told them to make record of it and even keep a physical sample if possible. My "buddy" has nothing to do with this story besides that he's driving me around while I'm without my car.

I'm not exactly well off either btw. I'm not financially unstable but I have other things I need to pay for and a few hundred dollars saved could really help me out in the future. I can plan for regular maintenance but not for bs like this.

Asking people if they had complaints isn't going to get you anyplace. You expect them to say "Oh ya people complain about our product all the time". Your bigger issue is the extensive repair cost for the "damage". That is where you are getting ripped off.
Gas stations (especially the busy ones) are not adding shit to their fuel to try to earn a few cents. As Re Invention said they do fine on their own. Gas stations take a lot of flak for the price of gas but they don't set it the oil companies and governments do. They just provide the final product like any other business out there.

That sounds like you're living above your means. A few hundred dollars is chump change on repairing a car built in the last 10 years, regardless of brand. If you can't take a >$1k unexpected repair bill it may not have been wise to buy a $25k sports car.

Fair enough, but bear in mind that I haven't even seen the bill yet so no one here knows just how expensive the repairs were according to the dealership. They didn't say that it would be massively expensive, just that the fuel disposal would be the most costly. I know these guys and they know me so I'd like to think that they will give me a fair quote.

You're making it sound like I'm trying to accuse Shell of purposefully contaminating the fuel and breaking my car but I'm not, I know that it's probably an accidental leak. But at the same time we all know that fuel sold in America is not even near the quality of fuel sold in other countries, and that fuel of the same octane can be very different depending on the station you go to. I'm not some wacky conspiracy theorist but the ambiguity of what's actually in the pump leaves room for question.

Depending on how much fuel it is, you don't really need dispose it at all, you just need to filter it. There are many funnels that provide a filter to keep water out of the tank. Worse case, you filter it to remove the water and other contaminants then use it in another vehicle or maybe lawn equipment.

It's not about if I can pay it or not, it's a matter of whether I want to.

I don't really understand why I'm suddenly being portrayed as the villain here. This wasn't meant to be a post about the car bill, just about the gas stations. Are you guys telling me that if your car broke down because of bad gas that you had no way of knowing was bad, you wouldn't at least try to get the responsible party to pay for the damages?

That's a lesson you learn after a incident like this, though. The transaction is on my card history so I can always bring that up if they want proof of purchase.

A fuel pump swap is $1,500 all on it's own! At least that is the price quoted to people that wanted to get one done when out of warranty and the new pump came out.

I'll say this: if the bill turns out to be egregiously expensive then I'll shut up about the gas stations.

Here's what he said about the fuel disposal: They'd have to get a man in a truck that works for an independent company to come over and take the fuel away to dispose of it in some manner that they didn't specify.

Nobody is trying to make you the villain. Your implication was that they deliberately sold you bad gas and that was my main point of contention.
My other concern is that you were told it was 70% water yet you were able to drive more than a block. You are so focused on trying to place blame on the gas station you are missing (or ignoring) that the extensive repairs were probably not required.


Yes, I would certainly hold the station responsible if I learned I had bad fuel from them. I actually have and told the story on here a year or so ago. You need to get the sample from the dealer, contact the appropriate agency for you State and follow the process. Asking people if they had other complaints is not the way to do this.

$50 to $100 as I said before. This is stuff I arrange every single day.

I think you misunderstood me when I said I was going to get proof of complaints. By "complaints", I meant other people whose car broke down because of bad gas they got that day. In other words, I want to see if I'm the only one who was affected by the diluted gas. The ultimate goal is to get them to admit fault and pay for the damages, and if they are getting multiple reports of broken cars from that single day then they will be more pressured to take responsibility. While we've been discussing on here I've been making phone calls and I'm pretty sure I've found the supply company who sells the oil to that specific station.

And as I've been saying, the reason why I was able to get home was because I already had fuel in the tank when I filled up. The water that was in the bad fuel wouldn't have had time to sink down and corrupt the system in a matter of 5 minutes.

I get what you're trying to say though. It is entirely possible that the dealership is being stupid and doing unnecessary things, but I will decide that once I meet the technician in person, see the bill and get a detailed explanation of everything that was done. The only known right now is that the fuel was bad, so that's the immediate problem that I'm trying to take care of.

This is not something you can tackle on your own. If you read all those reports I linked you will see that many stations still denied issues after the government and media went after them. Not sure how you even plan to get others to come forward and how you can weed the real ones out of the crowd that think they have a chance to get a free tank of gas even if they do come forward. There is not one thing you can do as an individual to make them confess even if they did know about the problem. Just pick up the phone and call the proper people with the skills, training and resources to investigate. Every hour that goes past means you have lost that much more chance of them finding anything.

UPDATE: I spoke on the phone with a supervisor from the fuel supplier of the Shell earlier today (I won't name the company for respect of privacy since they were very nice). After a brief discussion, he admitted that they had accidentally sent out a bad shipment of fuel that had been exposed to a water leak, and I guess it had been delivered just hours before I went to the station. He mentioned that he had received calls from other customers with damage claims but he didn't specify how many. To sum it up, he called it a "lapse of concentration" and was very embarrassed because they hadn't messed up like this before, and he was very apologetic and he said that they would pay for my expenses at the dealership as long as I provided proof of purchase from the Shell station. I sent him a cropped picture of my card history which showed the purchase and gave him the number of the Subaru technician. I still haven't heard from the dealership yet but I'm sure I will tomorrow. It looks like things have finally been settled. :thumbup:

someone must have really screwed up badly for them to admit it over the phone.