I do not know WHERE you live, but that is cruel and unusual. To control and combat this anomaly, go inside and demand to pre-pay. Make sure you round off your request now.
I posted this right after I got home from work so that was the inspiration for this question. I filled up on the way home and I actually did prepay because I don't have a credit card. I gave them $35.00 but I had to work to stuff $34.00 worth of gasoline in the tank but I guess one more drop just had to come out so it went to $34.01 right before I hung the pump back up so now I have 99 cents in change in my purse!
This post was edited by Livvie at July 29, 2017 8:32 AM MDT
No, they are not, why should they? Instead, they deliver the fuel so rapidly, and have such sensitive automatic stop-valves, that it is extremely difficult to stop them manually on an exact volume or price.
UK pumps deliver by litres and ££, both to 2 decimal places, so the increments amount to thimblefuls. (0.01l = 1c.c.)
No, each pump has its own delivery speed and rhythm, though. If you frequent the same station, try using the same pump. Play with it, speeding it up and slowing it down, and soon you'll have the feel for that pump. If you routinely use the same pump, you'll get to where you can pump at full bore right up until you let go and stop right on the penny.
This post was edited by Bozette at July 29, 2017 12:14 PM MDT
A good point, but using the same pump in the same garage is not very practical when the number of garages has declined so much that normally, you have to use a different pump each time anyway. Also, my own car has a weird tank and unreliable fuel-gauge thanks to it having been converted, and I still haven't grasped its caprices!
Oh, I am sure, but I live in an area that has lost many filling-stations over the years, and those left are usually busy as a result , so you can't guarantee using the same pump each time! Nor do I try of course. There's no point. I don't even use the same filling-station regularly but buy as and when I need while avoiding as far as possible, any additional driving to do so.
My point though was that I see no "conspiracy" in it at all.
The modern pumps do seem to vary but generally are so rapid that trying to control the delivery to a 0.01 value - quantity or price - is more trouble than it's worth. If you buy fuel in gallons it may be easier, but when it's in litres at something like £1.15 a litre, even more on the motorways, the numbers flip over very quickly, and the measuring is much more sensitive than the trigger-valve on the nozzle.
Now there might be a "conspiracy", or more accurately a cartel. Not in the machines but in the charges.
In the last two weeks I have driven quite long distances on the motorway, whose service-area prices are notoriously higher than elsewhere, both for fuel and in their cafes. I saw one services-area advance sign giving the petrol and diesel costs at the next three, with distances to them. All three were the same prices, £1.33/litre, some 10 - 20p/litre more expensive than typical on the main roads, and pretty much the same as their counterparts 200 miles away - despite different franchises and fuel companies.
I don't know which country you live in, nor do I know the conversion to US gallons, but 1 UK gallon = 4.54 litres, so you can see how such differences rapidly add up.
It's that price-fixing I regard as suspicious, not the pumps being difficult to control by the user to silly limits without delaying the queue. In the end though, does that extra pence or cent matter? Your car is going to use that extra drop of fuel anyway.
WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH 