Going to try. I’m asking for the bare minimum of the costs.
Repair, original gas and 3 journey’s to and from the dealer at federal mileage rate (70 miles away). My wife and kids had to drive me down and back to drop me off to pick it up. I had to send it to the dealer because I expected it to be warranty work.
I’m not adding anything for the tow (which was covered by my roadside assistance), having to borrow someone else vehicle and the amount of time I wasted on it.
You are entitled to all expenses related, Ya know the ceo is making millions, and you want to be the good guy and treat people right, I used to be that way, but it ends up I am getting screwed and some guy gets a million dollar bonus, screw that!
Years ago I would sometimes travel about Colorado w/a relative in his 4-seater airplane, and my job was to test the plane’s gas tanks for water intrusion prior to each take off. There was a little valve at the bottom of each wing, I’d press it, and a little liquid would come out. As long as it smelled like gas, good to go. See if you can come up w/a way to do that with your water bottle sample so you are certain what those two layers actually are. There’s definitely some kind of major contamination there. It’s possible that same layering effect was occurring in the station’s holding tank, and you just happened to get the brunt of it. The cars who were filled afterward didn’t, b/c your car got the entire layer of water.
Do you think you may have been on the end of a trick or a practical joke? Could someone have poured water into your tank as a prank? That’s another idea.
A final idea, I don’t know what a mix of diesel and gasoline looks like, but if the diesel pump was used, this symptom could happen. While it’s more or less impossible to fill a diesel car w/gasoline b/c the gasoline nozzle is bigger diameter than a diesel car’s fuel fill hole, it’s definitely possible to fill a gasoline car w/diesel. A neighbor of mine had that exact problem last summer. Engine started to chug and soon came to a halt a few blocks from the gas station.
If the testing shows that indeed it was water, given the evidence presented by your shop, I think you have a good chance of being reimbursed for your trouble by the gas station owner. It may require some persistence on your part though. $540 seems reasonable for that.
If they deny responsibility and I have to take them to small claims then for sure the amount will increase significantly, to include additional compensation. I’m not including harder to quantify costs like potential future repairs and impact on trade in value (don’t know if this would show up on a Carfax or the like). At the very least any Audi dealer has access to those records and would use it as leverage on a trade-in.
I feel I have at least a 50/50 chance in small claims as the burden of proof is significantly lower than other courts, I merely need to demonstrate a “Preponderance of evidence”. Not a slam dunk by any means, but well worth the $100 or so to just annoy the gas station company.
I put almost 17 gallons in, but that doesn’t sound like a lot from a huge underground tank. I know the “nobody else complained” line is going to be their defense.
I don’t think anyone could have tampered. My gas cap locks with my car. My car is stored in a garage at night and sits locked in front of my office window during the day.
Diesel is in a completely different area at this particular station.
In meantime you still probably have some water in your gas tank. There’s a gas treatment product that will help that problem. I think it prevents the water from layering like that inside the tank, so it mixes evenly w/the gas and you don’t get any big gulps of water ingested into the engine. Ask you shop if using that is a good idea.
If I had that problem I’d want to rid the tank of all the water asap. Water can corrode parts in the fuel supply and fuel injection system, not something you want. Either by draining the tank completely, or driving the car enough miles that all the gas in the tank gets used up and then refilled with good gas. I used to live in a place where I’d get water contaminated gas once in a while, and as long as I drove the car to quickly rid the gas tank of the water it caused no lasting harm.
The ethanol they mix with gasoline today will likely act as a dryer mopping up any residual water and making it blend with the gas.
It’s just when the amount of water goes past a critical value when the water saturated ethanol itself becomes insoluble in gas and precipitates out of solution.
Water and gas won’t mix
Water and ethanol will mix
Gasoline and ethanol will mix
So the ethanol acts as a co-solvent making water mix with gasoline, up to a point. Go past that point and suddenly the ethanol becomes insoluble in gas and you have a layer of gas floating on a layer of ethanol and water mixture.
Yeah that’s what I concluded from my research. My understanding is that the colder it is the less water is needed to cause the separation. It was darn cold on Wednesday…
That’s one of the reasons alcohol is not allowed to be blended with avgas. Nothing like separation occuring at 20,000 ft where it is cold.
From Wikipedia:
Automotive gasoline — known as mogas or autogas among aviators — that does not contain ethanol may be used in certified aircraft that have a Supplemental Type Certificate for automotive gasoline as well as in experimental aircraft and ultralight aircraft. Some oxygenates other than ethanol are approved.
It is 10:15 here, and still didn’t hear from the gas station corporate office that promised to call me Friday afternoon or Monday. I know there is plenty of Monday left, but this just seems like they are not taking this seriously.
If they don’t call, you should call. Don’t let them go too long. You might consider getting a paper trail going, like emails or letters. Do you know any lawyers? Maybe someone at church if you go. A letter from a lawyer can go a long way to waking them up. A friend owned a Jaguar XJS with engine problems. Occasionally it would just stall and would get it towed home. Some time later, it would start again. He ran in circles with Jaguar America and told a friend about it. His friend was a lawyer and offered to write a letter for him at no charge. Shortly after that, my friend received a call for Jaguar America offering to replace the engine.
I called and left a message with his assistant and a voicemail at about 11am. Still no returned call. This is just aggravating me now.
I called BP and they were very helpful and described the steps to file a claim. Now that doesn’t necessarily translate to a reimbursement, but at least they were helpful. I told BP I’d give the local company today to get back to me and if not I would go ahead and file with them.
Yes, and it is entirely possible that they have had 10, or 20, or 30 complaints of the same nature, and that all of those people were also told that their complaint was the only one.
Denying guilt is the usual response of a guilty person, and denial does not necessarily equal lack of culpability. Just be very wary if they tell you over and over again that they did not collude with anyone… to damage your car.
I just spoke to the guy. He held firm that there were no other reports and the test they ran showed no water.
They said they pumped gas into a glass container and then used water detecting paste to test it.
I asked if thought I would get a different result from BP, he said he didn’t think so as they would essentially ask him if he’d taken the steps he did and then deny it.
At that point he is standing firm and not taking any responsibility.
I still just went ahead and filed with BP, but I can’t say I have high hopes.
If that fails, I’ll have to decide if I want to go the next step of small claims.
Maybe I’m a sucker, I believe that there haven’t been other reports, but maybe others were less dramatic than mine and people chalked it up to the cold weather. They certainly didn’t shut the pump down, I checked multiple times over the last few days.
Pinch the top of the straw and insert to the bottom layer. Unpinch, then re-pinch to capture just the bottom stuff. Lift out, hold over Specimen Bottle #1
Take fresh straw, same procedure, but only dip into the higher layer. Drop into Specimen Bottle #2
Repeat if there’s a third (e.g. Ethanol) layer. Drop into Specimen Bottle #3.
A few years ago I went after a large corporation in small claims court. They settled rather than going to court. It was cheaper for them than sending a representative to the court. So I would recommend small claims court.
BTW, I got some bad gas in my VW back in 1978. The dealer had to replace parts of the fuel injection system, etc. It was an ARCO station, and they paid with no hassle. However, when I needed more gas after the repair, I went back to the same station, thinking that surely they had cleaned their tanks. No! Another repair, which ARCO also paid for. So you may wish to select another gas station.
