This is hardly worthy of a thread, but I had to share my frustration.

We get rewards points on our grocery shopping toward gasoline at the affiliated station, so I filled up the other morning. The good part is that I saved .40/gallon, so I ended up paying $2.259/gal. I finagled my gas cap under the lever so I could go back in the car and wait while it filled up (it was about 15 degrees outside). It seemed like it was taking a long time, so I went back outside and pumped manually. That's when I realized that even at full speed, the pump was delivering gas pretty slowly. No kinks in the hose or any other evidence of a faulty pump, just poor engineering. It was so strange that I asked someone on another pump if theirs was slow. He rolled his eyes and said it wasn't my imagination, they were slow. How slow? I decided to put a clock on it, as I had to wait anyway. It took twenty seconds to pump one gallon of gas. Yeah, it was still less than 5 minutes for the 14 gallons it took, but I've never experienced such a slow pump.

As I said at the top, hardly worthy of a thread, but somehow I feel better already for having shared my misery. Thanks for listening. You folks are cheap therapy.

Probably past time for the station to change the filters on their pumps. Clogged filters are usually the reason for that slow of a pump speed.

A gas station attendant once told me that realllllly slow pumping at his station was related to how often the filters on the pumps were changed. I don't know if it's true, but the pump I usually used did, in fact, gradually slow down over time. I don't know if it has sped up; I found it so frustrating that I usually go to a different station now.

Now, $.40 reward may be worth a thread, by itself!

Edit: JoeH is faster!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2010 09:30AM by Michael.

I thought it was my imagination that some pumps crawled.
Now I know why.
.80¢

I had a similar experience trying to pump gasoline in really cold weather like that. The 40¢ discount I had didn't help much considering the extra gallon of gas that I pumped onto the ground when the pump didn't shut off.

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Around here ACME has a similar deal at Sunoco stations and the pumps are pretty fast. I don't think the discount has anything to do with it. Down the road there is this Hess station that has been slow every time I filled up there. They do have one of the lowest prices though.

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After you discover you're riding a dead horse, your best strategy is to dismount.

15º might have had something to do with it, too...

one thing you can try; this may seem silly but it works at the municipal pumps we use at work - if the pump is delivering slow remove the nozzle from the filler and raise it above your head, reinsert in the filler tube and start pumping. I don't know why it works, but it does (at this pump anyway). I've tried different variations like removing and holding the nozzle in a vertical position, but have found only the above works.

My Costco gas station has big signs advertising that they change the "FILTERS" very often, so you will not notice a slow pump speed. Thus saying that other stations that you notice this on, may have dirty filters.

I once stopped at a station that was 1 minute for a gallon I stopped at 3 gallons
because my cap wouldn't fit under the handle and the latch was missing, I paid and left.

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Grateful11

Hess station pumps in this part of PA also seem very slow. Sunoco too.

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Water freezes and clogs the filters.

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Staunton, Virginia

I've noticed it slower at a Hess station when all or almost all the pumps were in operation at the same time.

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And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Western Massachusetts



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2010 11:40AM by blooz.

they slow down delivery so more people can take advantage and/or they won't have a surge and run out
of gas.

Friend owned gas station right out of high school. Won WLS contest to GIVE away gasoline, by turning down
output to trickle, and met the 5pm deadline for the lowest price in all of metro chicago. The give away
was LESS than the prize, so he made out.

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The gas I was pumping was in the summer heat.

I always thought it was because the station's fuel tank is low and the pumps had to strain to pump the fuel higher.
I had the slow pump problem Friday. Real slow. I would have left but, I had put fuel injection cleaner in the tank and needed to dilute it.

Did someone mention the fuel filters at the station?









Joe

spent time as a tech changing filters at stations on a regular schedule...if we missed by a few days we would get calls due to slow running pumps.....

Quote
Carm
Did someone mention the fuel filters at the station?

Is this on par with corrupted fonts causing all sorts of trouble?

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After you discover you're riding a dead horse, your best strategy is to dismount.

If it was July, 95 degrees and there were lithe young ladies in bikinis manning the pumps, slow probably would not be a problem.