Pain in the gas

You'd think buying gas is easy, a no-brainer, an everyday chore. You'd be right - except in California. First of all - and this is true throughout the country - a gas pump operated by a credit card automatically shuts off at $50, $75, or sometimes $100. When you have a 60 gallon fuel tank this becomes an issue. Do the math.

Now in some - but not all - stations you can reinsert the credit card and off you go. But you don't always know which stations have this feature.

In California there are a couple of new wrinkles. First of all many stations charge extra for using a credit card. We think this violates their credit card agreement, but who am I to argue? OK, so it's a few cents a gallon more, right? Wrong! It is often 10-15-20 cents more. My personal favorite was a station in LA that charged a cash price of $3.35 a gallon (for regular) and - this is NOT a typo - $4.25 with a credit card. Needless to say we did not buy gas there.

My next favorite trick is the stations that don't take a credit card at all - and don't tell you until it's too late. It is always fun jockeying 50' of rig into position at a gas pump, getting out and unlocking the fuel filler door before you realize it.

But it's OK. Some of these stations accept ATM cards. I prefer the credit card because I get a 5% rebate, but what the heck. So I put in my ATM card. The station charges 45 cents to verify the ATM but I am here and I need gas. I start pumping, and the pump shuts off at $98.10. I don't mean the tank was full (it wasn't). It just shut off at that nice round number. OK - I'll re-insert the ATM card and fill up. Nope. It wouldn't accept the same card. You'd think that since they had charged me 45 cents to validate the card that it would know that I have more than $98.10 in the bank.

So here we are with 3/4 of a tank - enough to get moving but necessitating another gas stop sooner than I would like. But that's OK. Getting gas isn't such a big deal, is it?