OT: petrol pumps

Ihave always presumed that the machine is accurately metering fuel - which means it may not be working in exact units of currency.

Nick

PS I'm sure that when we get fuel prices up to £10.00/l (next Saturday?) the cogs in the machine will line up nicely.

N.

I can't say it is a problem I normally have, even though I routinely fill to an exact pound.

Is this

Perhaps you should find one of those pumps that allows you to preset the amount you want to spend.

Piss the attendant off and pay with a tenner ...

Some pumps have a facility to set a value of fuel to dispense beforehand, I've never used it, but do they stop at the exact ££ amount, or the nearest metering unit under, or over?

Back in the days of mechanical pumps there used to be a mechanical number display on the side, which was the actual total gallons dispensed, and a multiplication factor which was close (but not equal) to 1.

AIUI, because the pump accuracy was greater than the tolerance specified by Weights and Measures, it was possible to routinely dispense slightly less than was indicated. Not much, but enough to be worth doing.

Chris

I tend to want to buy as much fuel as will fit and will trigger the auto-stop (hoping that all pumps' auto-stop is set at a similar level) so I can measure my fuel economy for each filling. Unless I'm paying in cash, I don't tend to bother too much about the exact total cost, except as a general "*How* much?" which is a comment about the extortionate cost of fuel. And that's the Yorkshireness in me coming out. But I wouldn't go as far as someone I knew who said "I'd rather burn a tenner than give a pound to the council" - which places the fact that someone else is gaining ahead of the fact that he is losing.

IME they stop at the exact amount every time.

Well I do that too, but once the auto-stop kicks in then I carefully carry on. I can usually get another 2+ litres in. I stop when I can see the fuel levelling out just below the opening to the tank. That way the fill is consistent.

I enter the figures in a spreadsheet which doesn't just calculate the MPG since last fill, it also averages over the last 5 fills and the average since I purchased the vehicle.

It would seem pointless to be able to set how much you want to pay unless the pump cut off at the exact value entered.

Trying to remember when last I saw anyone pay cash for fuel. The filling station I use is the cheapest round here so pretty well always a queue to pay. For some reason, pay at the pump with your card doesn't seem to be common in this area - although an obvious 'safer' way during the pandemic.

Well you'd think.

However, the older I get, the less surprises me.

These fixed-amount pumps are pay at the pump versions, I always use them rather than go inside, but probably the same pumps that aren't pay at pump also have fixed amounts ...

That is a design feature: they want you to come into the kiosk and then be tempted to buy a few little extras. If you pay at the pump that rarely happens.

I suspect the pumps "accidentally" rounding up by 1p when you try to stop at a whole number of pounds may also be intentional - to stop fraud by the shop staff from those paying by cash with e.g. a bunch of banknotes. If you have to get change then the assistant has to open the till and thus ring up the right amount. This is also the main reason that most prices end in 99p.

I have a similarly detailed spreadsheet for both consumption and mileage, which has seen many changes since I retired. In 2020 according to my Fitbit I walked about four times the distance I drove.

The equivalent spreadsheet for my partner's car will now have to be radically re-thought, as she has just got an EV.

Chris

So why don't crooked shop assistants have a few pennies in their pockets?

Bill

It's nonsense: the 99p thing is about retail competition. I remember* a period when the cheapest price of a [brown goods consumer durable] went fron £*.99 to .98, .95, .90, .89, .85 and eventually .84p.

Apart from that, there's the false but largely unacknowledged customer perception that £69.99 really is significantly cheaper than £70.00

Any till-basher knows how to keep track of what the till "owes" him. Often it's as simple as a pile of pennies on the shelf next to the till.

• Once upon a time, in a different life, I was a retailer of [unspecified] brown goods consumer durables.

I can remember (in the 70s) when there was an actual multiplication factor of 2 as the pump prices only went up to 99p/gallon. They thought we would have changed to litres before the price went that far.