REVEALED: How petrol pumps cheat you

Take a look at the various ingenious methods

With the number of vehicles plying on the road increasing every year, fuel prices are sky-rocketing. Many petrol bunk owners are cheating customers and pocketing the money. How petrol pumps cheat your money. Here's how customers are being hoodwinked at petrol bunks.

You may want to pay extra attention to service station staff who are in the habit of holding the tip of the fuel pipe attached to the nozzle while filling up fuel tanks. They may try to obstruct the flow of fuel multiple times while dispensing fuel. Their constant obstruction will result in less petrol making its way to the tank while the fuel dispenser screen will display the intended quantity and you end up paying more for less fuel.

The fuel nozzle is inserted into the tank while dispensing fuel. Even before the tank fills up, the nozzle in removed. The nozzle and the pipe end up retaining some of the fuel for which you end up paying as well.

Attention diversion is yet another tactic used by fuel station staff to cheat customers. They engage customers in a conversation or divert their attention elsewhere while filling fuel. A distracted customer ends up not noticing the total quantity of fuel dispensed.

A mathematical trick is also used to cheat customers. In the case of a customer who asks for fuel worth Rs 1,000 to be dispensed, the staff deliberately fill up for Rs 200 first, and then ask the customer once again on how much fuel is needed. Once the customer repeats without resetting the dispenser meter to Rs 0, they go ahead and fill fuel up to Rs 800. The customer doesn't realise that the total fuel filled is only Rs 800 since the metre was not reset. The customer ends up losing Rs 200.

Another cheat that fuel stations use is meter tampering. If a customer wants fuel for Rs 500, the service staff sets the meter at Rs 500 and begins filling fuel, midway, the customer's attention is diverted and the service staff tampers the meter reading to 500. Most customers end up paying Rs 500 looking at the meter without realising that they have been cheated. There is, however, a way to identify this cheat. When the staff enters 'Rs 500', the display remains constant but if only '500' is entered, the display will start to blink.

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