Petrol bunks

Beware of fraudulent practices at petrol bunks: One of my best friends was out of petrol when he was paying a customary visit to his farmhouse in his village.He had taken his SUV to his village, where he had grown up and done his schooling. His intention of doing so was to merely show his folk back home that he was prosperous and was doing very well. However, he did not bargain on being cheated by a petrol pump attendant when he went to fill fuel. He was a simple man with simple needs and was very loyal to all his possessions.He rarely changed anything in his life, whether it was his college girlfriend,his first car, his laptop or for that matter his smart phone.

He believed that old is gold and that one should not discard old possessions for new ones.Therefore, as was customary, he went to fill his car fuel at his favourite petrol pump in his village. When the petrol attendant was filling the fuel, he did not fill the tank to its brim.This gentleman did not pay much attention as he trusted the petrol pump and its staff since he had been visiting it for ages.Therefore, he believed that it would not cheat him. But little did he know that this would happen. He discovered the fraud when on his return journey to his home in the city he fell short of a few liters of petrol. When he discovered it, he vowed that on his next visit to his village, he would get even with the petrol pump attendant.

The question is how and why petrol pumps cheat customers. Do petrol pumps cheat? Do they adulterate the fuel with other lubricants in order to increase their quantity? Do they short sell?.The answer to the first two questions is an emphatic “no”. However, the answer to the third and last question will be “maybe”. Petrol station dealers are as good or as bad as any group of professionals.They are just a more maligned lot than most professionals. Therefore, they resort to such gimmicks at times. As there are rotten eggs in any basket of eggs, there are a few cheats in the petrol pump dealers group.That does not mean that all petrol pump dealers are cheats.

The next question is how do we become aware of it? We can do this by taking certain precautions when choosing a petrol pump to buy petrol from. It is always better to patronize company owned or company operated petrol pumps that are staffed by the oil company officials themselves. Another way to avoid frauds would be to patronize petrol stations that are visited by three wheelers. One can also patronize stations which have the newest pumps like the multi-product dispensers installed to serve customers.These are believed to be tamper proof and therefore safe.Many high selling petrol pumps are normally equipped with MPDs as old mechanical pumps can easily be manipulated to sell short.