Warning motorists

Big Nelly

One thing I find strange, if you are filling your car it will click the pump off to tell you the car is full. If there was never any diesel going in wouldn't the pump keep going and going and going till you finally realised when you got to a grand that something was up?

MercMad

Yes but if you knew it was nearly empty, €60 isn't going to fill up most cars nowdays, so he was putting in €60 only !

I've worked in the service side of the motor trade for more than 15 years and, in my experience, it is quite common to take customers cars for a spin. On one occasion I had to sack a mechanic after repeated warnings. So many mechanics take cars to the shop, to lunch, etc without taking into account that the car is somebody elses property, not to mention the fact there could be complications with insurance when a vehicle is taken without permission.

..........I can confirm from my own experience that this practice is widespread. Lets face it we expect mechanics to test drive cars, responsibly, and briefly, 2 or 3 miles tops after a regular service, and obviously a lot more if there is a reported problem !

I had a guy borrow one for lunch every day, he lived 1 mile away, he was responsible, there was no problem with that. I had another who drove to the shops in a customers car every day, unknown to me, and it was generally one he HADN'T worked on. I never knew until he damaged another punters car !

Another guy was sacked after he took a fleet car that was in for warranty work from Dublin to Tralee on a long weekend !!

I also know a guy who lost control of a very expensive car at high speed and wrote of the car and two others ! !

Anyway I thought that all fuel pumps had to be calibrated every 3 months, most display this sticker somewhere. Customes & Excise used to have a department for random checking also, cant remember the name now !

unkel

One thing I don't understand. When filling up a car, I can "feel" the fuel going into the tank. Also when finishing up, I always hold the nozzle a few centimeters away from the tank for a second or two to let the last few drips of fuel into the tank (as opposed to onto my trousers / onto the pavement)

And I always fill the car up till it is full (pump clicks) and pay by credit card. Sure if I filled up today, I wouldn't have to pay until the start of October. Very few people seem to do this. All the people that just put a tenner in. Or a fiver? You'd need to fill up every day or several times a day. What a waste of time. Why?

Is it really still from back in the day when people literally had no money at all? I remember seeing people get 2 liters of fuel and paying with pennies

prospect

I could feel it as if it was pumping, it was weird.
I knew in my mind something was not right.

Also I stopped it at €60, which usually has the car full on the dashboard, but not spilling out the nozzle.

LostinBlanch

prospect wrote:

No I refilled at a seperate pump, as they had put a 'Out of Use' sign on the original pump.

That's what I thought might have happened, so I'd have given them the benefit of the doubt (If I got my money back of course). But I have been in some garages where the owners might have tried to get away with this! :rolleyes: Short term greed but they would lose out in the long run.

prospect wrote:

This is more of a warning for you to check your fuel level before you drive off, as it could have been a genuine mistake on the garages behalf, (although they could have handled it better).

Good idea, I do anyway.

netwhizkid

Hello, Don't any of ye check the mileage of the clock before putting it into a garage? I always do this and let the tank almost empty too. It is a sure fire way to check if your car is being driven without your consent or not.

The movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" comes to mind with this one, where after ferris parked his fathers Ferrari/Porshe?? the parking attendants took it out for a spin and clocked up over 100 miles on it.

astrofool

Worked in a garage/service station for a good few years, and yes, the pumps get checked every few months that they're giving the correct amount, often they would give too much rather than too little. Very odd story, hard to work out mechanically what was happening, i'd hazard a guess that a little was going in, but was mostly air. Where I worked used a pressure based system (i.e. it was silent and you could feel the petrol as it went through), other places have an electronic pump that is quite loud, and vibrates alot, and may work on how much fuel goes through the pump over a certain time, rather than measuring the liquid directly when calculating (hence feeling like it was on).

Customers can be very wrong though, tanks generally have an ullage of ~10% so a bit more petrol than it says in the manual can go in. if the pump keeps clicking, it means the air thats in the tank is rushing out and pushing the fuel back into the pump, which is how it detects a full tank, and so stops pumping (also avoid large spill, tho when it clicks like this, the fuel will generally spray a bit due to the pressure from the air in the tank). Women ALWAYS make this mistake, and then blame the garage, some have it continually click and fill up by putting in spurts of 10c at a time, then after make a complaint, rather than before, when they can be shown how to do it properly. Honda Civic's were the worst for it, awful petrol tank.

I had one guy put 77 litres into his car, and claimed it wasn't full and that the car could only take 70, when I tried to put more in, it was clearly full (could see the petrol near the top). Also his fuel guage was slow to pick it up. Customers will rarely back down however, so it took some careful handling to get him to pay .

unkel

Makes perfect sense, astrofool

astrofool wrote:

I had one guy put 77 litres into his car, and claimed it wasn't full and that the car could only take 70

I can only imagine how hard it is to get those people to pay

MercMad

And I always fill the car up till it is full (pump clicks) and pay by credit card. Sure if I filled up today, I wouldn't have to pay until the start of October. Very few people seem to do this.

...............I hear ya !

Although generally I stick €60 in as I like round figures, its easy to spot something odd/amiss on my credit card. I use one solely for fuel so if there are any odd amounts I can spot it !

Victor

astrofool wrote:

I had one guy put 77 litres into his car, and claimed it wasn't full and that the car could only take 70, when I tried to put more in, it was clearly full (could see the petrol near the top). Also his fuel guage was slow to pick it up. Customers will rarely back down however, so it took some careful handling to get him to pay .

I would hate to discover what happens him if he leaves his car out on a hot summy day with a full tank.