Is Your Gas Pump Taking You For a Chump?

It's bad enough that your gas tank is taking hot, frothy lattes out of your mouth, but now it may be ripping you off as well. A malfunctioning check valve at your local gas retailer could be siphoning as much as $5 out of your pocket. Hold on, don't go running down to your local Chevron with pitchforks just yet. Chances are that if your local station does have malfunctioning valve, they don't know about it and it could be ripping them off just as easily.

The whole point of the check valve is to ensure that gasoline flows when the meter starts, except sometimes it doesn't. To quote Dr. Seuss: "Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you." The valve can either malfunction against you, where there is a pause after the meter starts before gasoline begins to flow and in your favor when the meter is still frozen while gasoline is already movin' on out.

There are, of course, conspiracy theorists but most expert agree that this little valve is not on most stations' "to do" list. The best defense against this problem are annual inspections by regulators, but as you might have guessed those inspections don't always happen.

I'll definitely be observing the next gasoline pump I encounter a bit more closely.

source: ap via business week