too bad i live in oregon and cant pump my own gas!!

I'd like to see some evidence to back this up. Gas pumps have to go through regular certification and tests to remain usable. There will be a sticker right on the pump showing when it was last checked.

Here in Lawrence, KS, all the stations have gone to pre-pay. There's one station that shaves a penny off of every transaction - you give the cashier $40, the pump shuts off at $39.99. This has happened to me twice.

@PeteJayhawk: Probably because it can't meter a cent of gas anymore since it's such a small amount. By winter it'll be a few molecules...

well other than number 4 how am i suppose to know if these are happening or not ?

I was getting gas the other day, the price on the SIGN was one thing, the price on the PUMP was another, and the price they CHARGED was another. The cashier refused to give refunds. (Roughly 20 cents/gal)

I wrote a letter to my Attn Gen, who forwarded it to the Commerce Dept.

I've never gone back, and I've told my entire family and all my friends to avoid it.

RaceTrac on 231 N in Montgomery AL.

I also was shorted once in Huntsville. It said my tank was full, but I ran out of gas after only driving an hour. It was a Chevron on 565 toward US65. I thought with the reputable name, it would be ok, but...not so much.

too much bold hurts my eyes!

When I worked at a gas station in CT we had to be careful when we changed the signs. State law said the pumps always had to sell gas at or below the price on the signs, never above. And apparently the fine was pretty substantial. So if prices were rising the signs got changed, then the pumps, and if prices were dropping the pumps got changed, then the signs.

I remember we were mid price-increase when one customer coming in yelling and screaming that the pump didn't match the sign. Once I pointed out he was paying 2 cents less than the sign and asked if he wanted to wait for us to raise it he shut up pretty quick.

You can check all of these if you fill your tank by stopping at the 10 gallon mark. If the price is ten times the amount of 1 gallon, you know you aren't getting screwed. I tend to keep my eye on the price when it gets around 10 gallons every time I fill up.

Just last week I filled up at a Hess station where the posted (sign) price was different from the pump price.
The sign price was 4 cents more!!

I felt like I got a deal. :) (Then realized, I'm still paying $4.01 for gas and felt less elated.)

I have heard of pumps that 'short' customers, what I never hear of are pumps that 'long' the customer. You know, give you more gas than they measure. If shorting was due to pumps being complicated pieces of equipment that have parts that wear out, then the law of averages means roughly half of them should give you more gas than you pay for.

How about this little nugget:

91 Octane - - 86 Octane - - 96 Octane

and then the prices disappear as soon as you pick up the nozzle. Granted, this hasn't happened to me, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if some people just assumed that the prices went from smallest to largest.

@Verdigris: That just means it is charging you for what it measured, not measuring what you got. Try filling a one gallon recepticle and seeing how close to one gallon the pump displays.

Another way you can get "screwed" is if the cut-off mechanism malfunctions. Usually it works fine, but last time I filled up, I wasn't paying attention and it poured a fairly significant amount of gas out the side of my car. It was gross, dangerous, and costly. Yeesh.

Still, this is just another reason to pay attention when filling up gas.

I grew up working at my family's full-service gas station as an attendant. I'd pump the gas, wash windows, check oil and tires, etc. Anyway, one of the things we'd always have to watch for on the entirely mechanical gas pumps was when you'd turn it on to start another transaction but the counter wouldn't reset at all after the previous fillup. We made damned sure to watch it get to zero every time because we knew if one person went around saying we were cheating people, it would do incredible damage to our business because it was a small town.

So when I hear about stations that rig their pumps, I can't help but shake my head in disgust.

@dry-roasted-peanuts: If I remember correctly, that happened to me shortly after I started driving. The numbers didn't disappear, but they got me with the order.

And to the people talking about being forced to pre-pay, I've used pay-at-the-pump since I got a debit card. I don't see any reason not to do so.

@dry-roasted-peanuts: To add to the confusion, I noticed on a recent road trip through the northern plains states (i.e. big ethanol country) that the lowest octane isn't always the lowest price.

In many cases the 87 (or 85) octane has no ethanol and is about ten cents per gallon more than the 89 octane with 10% ethanol.

Do #1 and #2 even happen with digital pumps? I can see that happening with the old-school rolling number pumps but I have certainly never seen that behavior in the last, oh, fifteen years.

I got caught paying $.05 more per gallon because I didn't pay cash :( I drive a F150 and can't carry THAT much cash on me!

"4. Big Sign, Little Price, But Little Sign, Bigger Price This is when the big sign facing the road shows a lower price than is on your pump or on your receipt. With gas prices fluctuating the way they do these days, this usually happens because the gas station didn't get a chance to change the sign yet. "

This is MASSIVELY illegal, at least here. The requirement I am aware of is that, if you raise the price, you MUST raise the price on the sign for 30 minutes before you can raise the price on the pumps. If lowering the price, it must be lowered on the pumps 30 minutes before lowering it on the signs.

And this is why i love New Jersey... I just sit in my car and let someone who knows what they are doing, pump my gas.
I might break a nail or something, yaknow?

The gas station down the road from me has one big sign out front that always shows a very low price. But at the pump, the cost is 0.20 cents per gallon more. The owners said there is a notice (in tiny letters) that the price on the sign is the lowest price for gas within a ten-mile radius.

Totally illegal, but it's not like the government cares.

I had a pump slowly start creeping (no gas flow) as soon as I activated it (nozzle not in car). I ended up filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

@Corydon: That's very common in farm country around here, and I think it's a bit of a legal dodge--the advertised lowest price, which usually undercuts the local bottom rate, is proudly displayed, with small print saying "Premium" underneath it. People then fill up on the lowest tier of gas and pay twenty cents higher per gallon than they would elsewehere.

It's got signage so I bet it's legal, but it's bucking convention enough that I suspect it makes them a tidy pile of extra money.

@LoganAdams: As I recall, you had to crank the reset lever when you removed the nozzle and before turning on the pump. It was fairly foolproof if you were familiar with the machines at all. It was the occasional, unscrupulus pump jockey that would not reset before pumping your gas that made all the guys look bad. That's why I always pumped my own or got out to watch if someone was doing it for me.
As for the signs, I remember gas wars of the sixties and early seventies when the signs were changing all day long a penny or two at a shot. Till they would all level out at some ridiculously low price for a couple of days. I remember filling my gas tank, buying cigarettes and a Coke and getting change back for my $5 bill.

Not a screw, but I hate, hate, hate, HATE pumps that slow down 50 cents before you finish pumping. This is the 21st, century, you can easily design a pump that shuts off exactly when it is supposed to, or at most $.05 before the final dollar amount. I swear this is done just to piss people off into leaving early. Whoever invented this feature, PLEASE DIE.

@RStewie

They're idiots. At the fuel company I worked for previously there was a motto:

"Price is going up? Outside / in. Price going down? Inside / out."

Basically it mean if the price was heading up, change the big sign first, followed by the computers that control the gas pumps. The opposite applied to the price going down. Either way, you paid less than the big sign at the pumps for the duration of the price change.

@Inglix_the_Mad: Smart. Let's make that a law.

I used to work at a couple of gas stations for a long time, so I can answer the big sign/little sign dealie:

Basically, we'd lower the price on the pump before lowering the sign's price so we wouldn't be swarmed before we were ready; similarly, we'd raise the price on the sign before the pump to wait for the people on the forecourt to finish pumping up before we'd change the pump price.

Sign price does not equal pump price. Always check the pump.

@PeteJayhawk: You should be able to go back inside and collect the difference. If the cashier doesn't want to give you back your penny, you should call the manager.

@RStewie: Your guage might be malfunctioning. Check your car's owner's manual to see what the tank capacity is. 55-60 litres is typical of a six-cylinder family sedan.

@dry-roasted-peanuts: The only prices that should disappear from the pump are the grades of gas you aren't buying.

I got bit with the inside/outside pricing game once. Instead of causing a major fuss, as I often do, I simply grabbed a king size Snickers bar and declared "That should cover it!" and walked out.

I kept my eye on the rearview mirror all the way home looking for members of the local law enforcement community, but so far, so good!

Just want to throw this out there about #1

Most newer pumps have the hose hanging from the top of the pump, this is so gravity can help push all the gas out of the hose (there's usually 4 hoses inside hoses on the inside) into your car.

The gas you are getting is _not_ registered from the handle that's in your car, but from the top of the pump. When you pick your grade, or flip the handle up, the pump is now 'on' and releases the gas. With higher and higher gas prices, the amount of gas it releases into the hose is the same, it just costs more.

I've been in the gas station business for 10 years, every time one of our pumps is malfunctioning in terms of gas counting (which is once every couple years), they always error towards the consumer. I.E it thinks it gave you 2 gallons but really gave you 2.1.

Another way they screw consumers is when you pay inside and when it gets to the last dollar that you paid for, the gas stops pumping at a lesser speed when it reaches about 55 cents before the last dollar runs out......In my opinion, it's better to pay with card @ d pump [which also creeps out due to identity theft stuff]....that way, u get exact quantity of gas u paid for...

@Sidecutter: 30 minutes? that makes no sense.

Actually when you pay with credit card, it will estimate the last drop. Usually thats about a 25 cent jump in the price. Next time you pay with a card, watch the pump display closely when the auto shutoff clicks off or when you push the lever to turn it off. It wont slow down, but the gallons and price will jump up.

When I worked at a gas station we removed the issue with #4 by changing the sign first if we were raising, or chaning the pump first when lowering. A couple of times I even yelled out the door, "Lowering the price, stop pumping and wait for me to finish or you'll get the higher price."

Somehow that still managed to piss some customers off.

"

9% of inspections find actionable problems
1-2% of the inspections find pumps shorting the customers

"

Actionable problems include underpumping AND overpumping. I know none of us will complain about overpumping, but in terms of accidential calibration problems the issues with overpumping are just as common as underpumping. In terms of mechanical failures (wear and tear) underpumping will occur more often than overpumping because the internal mechanism of the pump is leaking and fails to deliver a full squirt (pump) of gas.

Looking at the State's numbers, underpumping is roughly 15-20% of the actionable problems. I wonder how many of those actionable problems are overpumping?

@valarmorghulis:

OR just shut the station down for 5 minutes, perform every task and then reopen. Station up the road from me had a sign on the pumps saying "closing at 10:25 PM for maintenance, reopening at 10:30 PM". I wonder what kind of maintenance only takes 5 minutes?

1-2%?! that seems like a hell of a high amount to me! With a service station having between 4-12 pumps each! that could work out to 1:10 stations shorting you

RE: Pumps that slow down...

Whether or not you pre-pay inside or use your CC at the pump, the pump will slow down for the last $.50 or so in an effort to more accurately stop at the limit. Remember, most pay-at-the-pump systems have an upper limit imposed by the station's owner/operator - usually $75.

Yes, it's annoying. Unfortunately, there's very little you (as a consumer) can do about it. However, if you're pumping $75 worth of gas via PATP - even at $4/gal - the extra few seconds doesn't feel so long.

I had the opposite of #4 happen to me once... the price at the pump / price charged was like 8 cents lower than the price advertised on the big sign.

Don't know about the rest of the country, but here in CA, pumps are calibrated by the government official using a 5 gallon container. They check at 5 gal and 10 gal. Some gas station owner modified the computer chip on the pump so that they charge you more gas from 1-3 gallons. Pump would then slow down from 3-5 gallons so that the state calibration container would show the correct pump reading. Took a while for the state to figure out why there were so many complaints.

@RStewie: Uh, if your meter said it was full and you didn't pump a full tank, that's a problem with your car. If it didn't say it was full but you pumped a full tank, and you drove away and then ran out of gas, that's your own fault man... You should have turned right around when the meter didn't go up.

@Corporate-Shill: Actionable problems can include a lot things besides volumetric problems: Missing or unreadable octane stickers, brand name missing from gas pump, un-sealed but accurate meters, display problems, failure to notify the proper authorities when installing a new device, etc.

When I used to work with W&M I saw about equal numbers of meters being short and long. Most of those were within +/- 6-10 cu. in., which is about a 0.5-0.9% discrepancy (~0.5% is within tolerance). I'm not going to say I didn't have a few "holy shit this meter is way off" moments, but they were pretty rare.

I like it when the gas pump sticks just the tip of the nozzle in moves in a circular mo.. -what's that? Oh! screws you that way. Financially you mean...
...that could've been embarrassing.

@ssurfer321: "I got caught paying $.05 more per gallon because I didn't pay cash :( I drive a F150 and can't carry THAT much cash on me!"

Five cents more per gallon? That's $2.50 if you have a 50 gallon tank which I doubt you have. If that is hurting you, you'd better check your finances.