EPT
On my way home from somewhere today I decided I would get some gas for my car. My tank was almost EXACTLY at 50% capacity according to the meter (I have a 14.5 gallon tank). The only gas station on the way back was a full service Mobil. Normally I avoid full service stations as they tend to be more expensive, and also I prefer to just pump myself, but I didn't want to go out of my way to hit one of my usual stations.
The attendant starting pumping and then walked to a different pump to get another car started (the pump stops automatically, supposedly). I am not paying particularly close attention, but then I turn my head and glance over at the pump and notice it is at over 8 gallons and I'm thinking "wait a second..." and then I look in the sideview mirror (tank is on passenger side) and see gasoline spilling on to the pavement. Just then the attendant comes running over and stops it at 9.656 gallons.
Rough estimate of spill: 9.656 - 0.5*14.5 = 2.406 gallons.
The attendant starting throwing some powder crap down to contain the spill (he didn't do anything to the part of my gar that got splashed with gasoline from what I could tell). He then asked me to pay 30.89 (9.656gal * 3.199/gal) to which I said "can you refund me for the gas that spilled out" and through his broken english he basically explained that I was responsible to pay it and that he had to clean up the mess, and it was probably my gas tank's fault anyway, but it was just an accident. I didn't really have time to argue with him so after a couple of minutes of trying to discuss it I just paid and left.
Is it really the responsibility of the customer to pay? The problem is the customer can try to lie about how much gas spilled... but honestly if he had said 'it had to be at least a gallon take 3 dollars' I probably would have been fine with that. Unfortunately, I don't think he has the power to do that.
I tried using Mobil's website to look up some type of customer support to ask them about this... but all they seem to have is some e-mail form that might not even be for this purpose. If nothing else I can refuse to patronize this station, but it seems like a terrible policy to me.
Would you have handled it differently?
edit: note: nothing has ever happened to my car before like this so I doubt it was my car's "fault"
