With regular-grade gasoline approaching $3.40 a gallon in Colorado on the eve of Memorial Day, consumers want to make sure they’re getting every drop they pay for.
So here’s a surprising statistic: Last year, nearly 3 percent of gas pumps tested by state inspectors were dispensing measurably wrong amounts of fuel.
More often than not, the faulty pumps were giving consumers more gas than they paid for.
Officials at the Colorado Division of Oil and Public Safety hear plenty of conspiracy theories, and one they tend to debunk is the notion that gas retailers are cheating customers on fuel volume.
Investigators, however, say they have found cases in which stations sold lower-grade gasoline at mid-grade or premium prices.
A team of 11 state inspectors continually monitors the accuracy of gas pumps and the quality of fuel.
Inspector Chris Dufex has been checking fuel pumps for 27 years with finely-calibrated measuring devices, but he has never found a case of a filling station manipulating the sealed meters that control fuel output.
“They don’t do it intentionally,” he said. “This is a pretty well-policed industry.”
But that doesn’t keep pumps from malfunctioning, nor does it stop suspicious consumers from filing hundreds of complaints with the agency over perceived cheating by gas stations.
“There’s a lot of consumer sensitivity to prices,” said Mahesh Albuquerque, manager of inspection programs for the Division of Oil and Public Safety. “As gas prices go up, we always get a whole lot more calls.”
Half a gallon short?
One such complaint last week was from Denver resident Kyle Anderson, who pumped 5 gallons of gas into a 5-gallon gas can, only to find that the can’s measuring marks indicated he actually received 4.5 gallons.
“It was obvious that the can was not filled up,” he said.
The problem was more than the apparent loss of a half gallon to Anderson. He races motocross motorcycles, and he must use precise measures of gasoline and oil in his two-cycle engines.
As it does with every consumer complaint, the division dispatched an inspector to test and measure the pump at the Phillips 66 station at West 32nd Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard.
The inspector’s result after testing the pump the next day: It actually was dispensing 2 cubic inches of gasoline more than the meter indicated on a 5-gallon sale, equivalent to 1 extra ounce of gasoline for free.
Why the discrepancy between Anderson’s perceived shortfall and the inspector’s determination of bonus gas?
The complaint was one of the most common received by the division. A similar variation is a car with a nearly empty 15-gallon gas tank that ends up taking 15.5 gallons.
While it might appear that the discrepancy is due to a pump dispensing less gas than a meter shows, in most cases it is because the container – a gas can or a fuel tank – can hold more than its listed capacity.
“They are not accurate measuring devices,” inspector Dufex said of gas cans and fuel tanks. “People don’t realize that they are made with extra space to accommodate expansion and prevent spillage.”
Because of routine wear and tear, seals and valves inside pump meters gradually deteriorate, allowing more gas to flow through than the meter registers. That gives consumers a bonus.
Sometimes, meters get clogged and malfunction the opposite way, giving customers slightly less gas than they pay for.
But that is less common. Of 34,361 gas dispensers tested last year by the division, 909, or 2.7 percent, were outside the tolerance range of accurate measurements.
Of those 909, 237 were giving less gas than they should, while 672 were giving too much fuel.
If inspectors find that a pump’s discrepancy is more than 6 cubic inches per 5 gallons, equivalent to 3.3 ounces, the inspectors will cut the official state seals on the meters and adjust them, whether the pumps are giving too much or too little.
“We’re not in favor of the retailer or of the consumer,” Albuquerque said. “We’re in favor of accuracy.”
Gasoline grades switched
While the inspection division has never found tampering of the sealed meters, it has discovered retailers selling lower-grade gasoline at higher prices.
Last year, the state office levied a $7,000 fine against the owner of Crystal’s One Stop filling station in Fort Collins for selling 1,459 gallons of regular gas in pumps labeled and priced for higher-cost premium.
In a similar action in 2005, the Englewood-based Western gas and convenience store chain was fined $6,000 for selling regular as mid-grade.
In addition, the filling stations absorbed thousands of dollars in losses from removing the mislabeled gas and being shut down by inspectors until the problems were rectified.
Although Western paid the fine, Hossein Taraghi, owner of the chain, denied that he sold the wrong grade of fuel.
“It was all a paperwork error,” he said. “There was no test that was out of compliance.”
The operator of Crystal’s One Stop in Fort Collins, Amir Ali, could not be reached for comment.
In cases where mismatched octanes are sold inadvertently or where water accidentally infiltrates underground gasoline storage tanks, stations typically are shut down temporarily, but not fined.
Dufex said he understands why consumers are suspicious of gasoline retailers, especially when prices reach record levels.
But there’s a limit to what the inspection division can achieve.
“I can’t do anything about prices,” Dufex said while inspecting pumps at the Conoco at East Eighth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. “I’m just here to make sure that a gallon is a gallon.”
Staff writer Steve Raabe can be reached at 303-954-1948 or at sraabe@denverpost.com.
