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In discussion with someone recently, I was recommended to try BP Ultimate Diesel in my Passat V6 TDi. I stopped at a BP garage on Friday, in a bit of a rush, pulled up at the pumps, grabbed the "Ultimate" nozzle, and started to fill up. Imagine my delight to discover after about £25-worth that I was filling up with Ultimate UNLEADED! £250 of repair / car hire later, I'm mulling over whether it's me, or BP's naming convention. In my defence, I've been driving for 35 yrs and for the last 10, one of our two cars has been diesel, I always fill up both cars and have never made the cardinal error. It's not like I didn't know I needed diesel this time either. Why does BP need to share the "Ultimate" name across both diesel and petrol? Does Shell do Optimax Diesel, for example? Has anyone else fallen foul of this? Is there any likelihood BP might generously go someway towards my costs (probably two chances of this .... slim and fat, but worth asking).
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Not familiar with BP stations as theyre all Texaco round my way, but dont BP use a different colour coding system for their pumps, such as blue for superunleaded etc?
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yeah
bp ultimate in my area uses a red nozzle.
mind you i always treble check that its ultimate diesel(not unleaded)that im putting in. saying that i have only had a diesel car for six months so probably still being careful!!
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There's a very strong for all the fuel companies adopting the same colours for the different fuels e.g green for unleaded, black for diesel. It can be easy to get caught out when you're in a hurry
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There's a very strong for all the fuel companies adopting the same colours for the different fuels e.g green for unleaded, black for diesel. It can be easy to get caught out when you're in a hurry
It's so simple I am surprised that they don't already do it. They could also have fuel specific nozzles which only fit the correct tank, but that is presumably completely impractical, due to existing cars.
Leif
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BP has come under a lot of stick for the colouring of the ultimate pumps at it's garages. Quite a few people have filled up with the wrong fuel as they both have dark blue nozzles so your part of an ever growing club sadly. I have only used 2 tankfulls of Ultimate so far as I'm comparing it to Shell's performance Diesel (Shell Extra) which I have used for the past six months, and everytime I place the ultimate nozzle in the tank I tripple check that it's got DERV on it.
Write to BP and complain as they have been known to pay out for the tank drain as a way of an apology for thier blatant cock-up.
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BP is a multi billion pound business so asking for compensation wont be too much of a financial loss for them. Ask them for goodwill gesture, lay it on a bit thick too, make out your member of consumers assiosaction, your going to write BBC's Watchdog, loyal customer for years etc etc,... they can only say no.
terrible spelling..
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There was a company somewhere in Bucks where they own a fleet of Rover 45's, they once filled 10 of them at this BP site one day, when later on they all 10 of them clapped out down the same stretch of road from the premises, among many other customers they they put a complaint in to BP. It later turned out that diesel was accidently put into a petrol storage tank, i think BP had to pay compo for this aswell!?
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Its not what you drive, its how you drive it! :-)
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I've read that BP will compensate people where the pump colour was blue - quick search finds:
www.lizlynne.org.uk/news/296.html
It's got to be worth a try?
Why was the bill £250 though - if you noticed before starting then it just needs draining out. Stories abound about drivers being charged a fortune by BMW when they've put a few drops of petrol in, which wouldn't do any damage at all.
It is very confusing though - I've just gone back to diesel and cam within an ace of filling up with petrol the other day as I got slightly flustered in an Asda filling station that had credit card operated pumps that wouldn't take my card. I clicked the pump and realised straight away having put 7p of petrol in - that really confused the pump/billing system :-)
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Here's some advice that i do..
I fill up probably 20 different cars over a coure of a week, whilst i'm filling up instead of looking at dream woman filling her Audi TT on pump 7 i look at the nozzle,the sticker inside fuel door, and pump to make sure i'm filling up with correct fuel. i check and check agian over and over.
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Me too. Those damnable BP pumps are a nightmare. It doesn't matter which car I'm filling up, I find that the pumps are confusing. Having been unsettled by them I keep having confidence crisises and end up rechecking about every five quid throughout the filling up process.
Sure as fate I'm going to get it wrong one of these days. As it happens, it also seems that BP have the most ludicrous prices around as well, so I usually try to avoid them all together - lessening the problem.
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instead of looking at dream woman filling her Audi TT on pump 7
Aww come on - how can we red blooded males resist? They always look gorgeous :-)
When I got my Merc C Class estate I pulled up on the 'wrong' side of the pump (all the 'correct' sides were busy). I'd never had a problem doing this in my 406 Estate but in the Merc the nozzle just wouldn't quite reach. And right next to me was a honey of a girl filling a Merc SLK - she looked at me as if I was the Ultimate Prat.
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Closest i've been to a mistake was not all that long ago. Had the nozzle for unleaded in a TDi Golf, luckely i pulled out before anything came out.
It's such an easy mistake to make.
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Coitus interuptus?
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Well i got that!
left myself wide open for that one!
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Thanks, everyone, for all the replies. Thanks in particular to Bill Payer for the website link; I spoke with BP Customer Care this morning and would you believe it, their goodwill policy (paying "hardware costs" (whatever that means) for those who've mixed up the Ultimate fuels) ended on 1st May!! I explained that I made the mistake last Friday (29th April) but this cut no ice as it's now 3rd May. She explained they'd made great efforts in getting the colour coding right in the past 12 months etc.... but I said it's missing the point, which is: why can't BP limit the name "Ultimate" to EITHER unleaded OR diesel rather than both (to which she didn't have a prepared answer).
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I can't understand how they can justify ending it on 1st May, as they obviously have accepted there is a problem, and unless they change something, the problem will persist. Threaten them with Watchdog, just to see what the reaction will be.
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Happy to say that BP have compensated me for the garage costs. The PA to Liz Lynne (the MEP whose web page someone earlier in this thread had pointed out) phoned BP in my behalf, to be fair to BP I think they had already decided to consider my claim even though it was past the 1st May deadline, but the swift assistance of the MEP probably helped. So, many thanks to the forum!
The problem of filling up with wrong fuel must be wider than I imagined; after my own little mishap, a chum filled up his new diesel S-Class Jag with unleaded last week, it managed to get him the three miles to the pub without any hint of a problem, but wouldn't budge when he came out. I'm sure I'm stating the blindingly obvious, but has any thought been given to making filler necks and pump nozzles different shapes for unleaded and diesel, e.g. a round hole for unleaded and square for diesel? I suppose there's the small problem of the 50 million cars in current circulation but history has surely been littered with similar challenges which have been overcome. Space suits and poop-bags comes to mind, for example.
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Different shaped nozzles must surely be the easiest way to differentiate, and if diesel went triangular, for instance, if the overall size of the triangle still fitted the standard circular shape, there would be no problem with filling up all existing diesel cars. Anyone from the oil companies care to comment ?
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Nozzles got narrower with the introduction of unleaded and cat. equipped cars to prevent people filling with 4* and killing the cat. To stop petrol being put into a diesel would require not only a different shape, but a different size (larger, not smaller). Trouble is, it would still fit the other way round.
Vigilance is, as ever, the watchword.
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I'm surprised no smarty pants electronics whizz has come up with a doodad to stick on the pump nozzle and a doodad to stick on the filler neck which makes a noise and flashes a warning if you put the wrong type of fuel nozzle in.
You could do it as simply with a magnet inside the filler with one polarity for diesel and the other for petrol. You'd then set the correct fuel to be the other polarity on the pump nozzle (an electromagnet which was only on when the nozzle was taken off the stand and the end was bunged in the car before fuel gets pumped). If you have a nozzle and filler of the same polarity and the magnets are strong enough it would be really difficult to get the nozzle in as they would be repelling each other.
teabelly
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Far simpler than magnets, etc., would be if they started putting 3 or 4 raised bumps on the handgrip of all diesel pumps. And instead of some brand name, just put DIESEL or PETROL.
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There's a proposal by an engineering company that I've seen links to a couple of times (but of course can't find now) to have an oval shaped nozzle / adaptor plate fitted on diesels. The oval nozzle would still fit non-equipped cars but once you'd fitted the adaptor plate you'd be safe from round petrol nozzles.
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One system I have seen here in New Zealand is to have an extra retaining mechanism on the diesel pump for the nozzle. To get the nozzle off the pump to use it you have to press a large plate. On the plate in large letters is the word: "DIESEL". It won't eliminate the problem, but it could help reduce it.
Most of our diesel pump nozzles are coloured black too. This matches the smoke that comes out the back, as we really do get some awful rubbish fuel here.
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I've been driving diesel cars for 10 years or so, I've never had a problem deciding which nozzle to use.
Saying that I did once put diesel into a rental van, my excuse was that it sounded like a diesel when I was driving it.
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If it's any consolation I too have made this error
I put BP Ultimate unleaded into my Diesel tank when seeing the "BP ULTIMATE" logo on the pump handle
I run a chauffeur business so I'm no stranger to fuelling vehicles several times per week, I fuel Deisels and petrol vehicles all the time, have done so for many years and have never ever made the big mistake before
IT IS ABSURD that BP have shared not only a brand but a LOGO and associated COLOUR SCHEME across both Petrol & Diesel
I wrote to tell them of my disgust that their colour coded marketing blunder had cost me dearly, I did get a breif reply, for some bizarre reason they wanted to know on which particular forecourt the miss-fuelling occured ??? have nevr heared back from them again
If I can make such a cockup I'm pretty sure many many others can too
The PRAT in my view is the BP marketing genius behind this PRATTISH cross product branding
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I wrote to tell them of my disgust that their colour coded marketing blunder had cost me dearly, I did get a breif reply, for some bizarre reason they wanted to know on which particular forecourt the miss-fuelling occured ??? have nevr heared back from them again
They did pay for the repairs to many people who did this, prior to them making the labeling more obvious.
Did you supply the details they asked of you?
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I have different reason reason for not having this problem. About 7 years ago my local BP garage on more than one occasion sold our 14 yo daughter cigarettes. When I confronted them, their attitude was beyond belief. I have not troubled any BP garage with my business snce then! Agree with all the above points though. An agreed strategy cannot be that difficult surely?
Papho
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Yep, I told them where the badly coloured pump handle was to be found and have never heared from them since
I use Texaco & Shell forecourts now and have banned all my Chauffeurs from buying fuel at BP
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