Volume Cheating

Are you really getting the amount of gas you have purchased each time you go to the gas station? We all like to think so. I ran across a story detailing maintenance checks on gas pumps throughout our country and it leaves a gaping hole which we could be paying for. How can we ever know as a consumer if we are receiving fair treatment at the pump? Unless we pump the gas into a measured container and then fill our tank, we cannot tell. Nobody is going to do that over a few cents or few dollars worth of hassle. Therein lays the issue. Filling stations and maintenance workers know the average consumer will just go about their business believing any potential loss isn’t worth the hassle to investigate and pay the price.

The article reports some interesting facts. Texas alone found that last year, there were nearly 2,000 pumps cheating consumers. The industry counters with an estimate that 90% of pumps are accurate and some even give consumers more gas. Other information provided reports there are only about 600 inspectors nationwide. 50 states and 600 inspectors provide us with 12 inspectors per state. How many gas pumps are there in each state? I dug up a report pre-year 2000 which reported that about 187,000 retail locations existed. That is stations, not pumps. It would be safe to assume that for every station, there are a minimum of 2 pumps. At the very minimum, we can safely assume there are over 400,000 pumps in our nation and that is about as safe a minimum that can exist in this equation.

Given an average of 12 inspectors per state and an average of 8,000 pumps per state, each inspector is responsible for at least 667 pumps (I would guess it’s over 1,000 if we knew the exact amount of pumps). It’s safe to assume that we need more inspectors. The article reports inspection standards vary “wildly” from state to state. My question is why is gas pump standardization different across our state lines? There should be a single, uniform code for each pump to conform to. Minnesota reports that they are not able to inspect every pump in their state, there are not enough inspectors. But, for the pumps they did inspect last year, 11% were faulty. After a pump is found to be in error, the station is required to fix them. However, only 25% of them are repeat inspected for compliance. Yes, you read that correctly.

Another issue with our gas pump maintenance involves the actual testing requirements for each state. As reported, “Michigan inspects only after complaints. New Hampshire and Arkansas allow gas stations to hire their own testers, while Tennessee and Florida rely on statistical sampling.” Going further, they found 17 states allow pumps to go over a year and a half between inspections. Quoting from the article, “…Arizona, at every three years. Maine’s inspections are up to every four years. Same with Texas. One pump CBS News found in Fort Worth, Texas, was last inspected in 2003, when gas was $1.56 a gallon.” At this point, do you really believe you are getting what you pay for at the pump?

Information from California shows “94 percent of pumps pass inspection. But consumers can still be cheated. That’s because pumps can pass even when they dispense a little less than what the pump says. It’s a margin of error the law allows.” What exactly is the agreeable margin of error here? Sure, California has 94% passing inspection, but what does it take to fail? High volume pumps that pass the test but still do not provide a full gallon “could rake in around $50,000 a year extra” according to the article. Each individual driver receives just a bit less than what they paid for. Not enough of a change to make an effort to scream displeasure over for the individual, but the volume over time cheats all of us.

When does the “cheat” become enough for an individual to speak up? Shouldn’t we say something if anything is being cheated from us no matter what the cost? No, it’s not being petty. As a consumer, we should get what we pay for each and every time no matter what it is. Gas is just one of the hot topic issues and is an easy target. We all know in the back of our minds that we are getting ripped off at the pump a little here and a little there be it a little watered down gas or not full gallons. How come your car runs better when filled up at certain gas stations and worse at others? No, they didn’t forget and put premium octane gas in the regular tank. So yes, we go throughout our lives being nickel and dimed to death because we don’t want to “waste our time” confronting an issue.

Industry knows this and they rely upon it. Just as the “passed inspection pumps” above show us, they are raking money in that does not belong to them. Consumers are prey to businesses. Consumers must understand that. We are not their friend, we are their target. Many other industries are applying these same techniques to their products. I’m sure there are hundreds of examples where volume cheating has been applied which to the individual seems petty. However, when spread over society, it results in thousands, if not millions, of dollars in “lost” wealth.

Take this to another level. Look at how you perform your job. Do you give 100% to your task or do you do just enough to complete it? Do you cut corners? Do you leave simple things out to get things done faster? I could go on but I’m sure you get the point. We all use the same volume cheating technique in our lives in many aspects of our life, our jobs being one of them. In the end, the primary reason why we do not confront the issue of volume cheating at such a miniscule level is because we do it ourselves. Only if the impact is great enough, or the cheat blatant enough, will we question whether we got our money’s worth. If we let the small stuff go, so will the other people in our lives who we are volume cheating.

I’m not condoning volume cheating. I’m stating the general attitude regarding the issue. We should all give everyone what they deserve and pay for. In so doing, we should honestly expect that in return. If we cheat others, then we should expect to be cheated. The gas pump issue can be measured in dollars, but there are many issues that can only be measured in time and possibly feelings and emotion. Volume cheating hurts everyone but we can begin to make things better by fixing it at the personal level.

Citation: http://www.cbsnews.com/