I don’t know about North Carolina, but in Texas if you advertise a price, you have to sell for that price.
Drivers Flood Station for 35 Cent Gas
WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — Traffic was backed up and police were called to control the crowd after a Wilmington gas station accidentally set the pump price at 35 cents a gallon.
The Wilmington Star-News reported Friday that hundreds of drivers flooded a BP station for the cheap gas after the price dropped around 9 a.m. Thursday.
Station employee Shane Weller said the price for premium gasoline was supposed to be $3.35 a gallon. He complained that customers paid the cheaper price all day without saying a word.
It was all the extra traffic that led station employees to the mistake around 6 p.m. They found it after calling their district manager, looking for permission to changing the price as a way of stemming the flow of customers.
Information from: The Star-News, http://starnewsonline.com
Jeff Ward, Austin’s local talk show deity…
[Deity because he was credited with being omnipotent in the same hour this discussion took place; he apparently canceled the Olympics, tax day, and a number of other things just by saying it was so. I never knew he had that kind of power]
…took calls on the subject for most of this afternoon. I especially like the caller who said he would not only fill up his car, but come back with his RV and his cigarette boat and top them off as well.
Would I fill up the tank? Sure, if I didn’t have to wait in line. Seeing the line, I would have gone somewhere else. Unlike the customers of that store, however, I would have stuck my head in after filling up and let the clerks know that the price was probably wrong on the pump. There is no crime involved in paying the advertised price for something.
That they didn’t notice the error till the end of the day speaks more to the relative intelligence of the store operators than it does to the morals of their customers.
