Tonight, Sunday 13th February I drove into the local BP garage, intending to fill up my Mondeo with unleaded gasoline. However, I noticed that the pump was operating very slowly, and called a halt after putting £38 worth of fuel in the tank.
I mentioned to the cashier that the pump was sluggish, and she told me that she thought they were running out of fuel. I didn't think any more about this until my car cut out, a mile or so along the road, in the dark. Dead. I didn't have a cell phone with me, and walked back to Stranraer, intending to ask the cashier if I could use the garage phone, so I could get some assistance. On the way, I passed a brand new Ford Fiesta with the bonnet up... yes, they'd filled up at the same garage. Not only that, they'd already called for help, and informed me that the local Automobile Association were dealing with six concurrent call-outs, all with the same symptoms. Then, the cashier wouldn't allow me to use the garage telephone initially, until I managed to convince her to call her manager at home. It gets worse... NOW, the cashier tells me that people have been coming back to the garage to complain ALL DAY!!! You'd have thought that it might have dawned on her that there was a serious problem... and, that even if she didn't have the authority to do anything, a call to her manager, at home, would have confirmed that it might have been better to close the garage. As a resuly of doing NOTHING, then probably scores of drivers have paid around £40 for the privilege of filling up with water-saturated fuel from the dregs of the forecourt tanks, or had our fuel injectors blocked with gunk, again from the bottom of the tanks. I've got a couple of real beefs with this -
- there should mechanical procedures in place to prevent the sale of such contaminated fuel
- leaving filling stations in the charge of people devoid of either authority or COMMON SENSE is not a good idea.
I'm now looking at a bill for several hundred pounds to get my tank drained and my engine examined, caused by £38 of defective fuel. The customer service of BP is worse than non existent. I'm going to try to get my money back, but, on the evidence of the type of people I'm dealing with, I'm not hopeful. Either way, I will never, ever, fill up with BP again.
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