A misfueller and his money are soon parted

What has happened to colour coding? New V-Power PETROL with BLACK flexible pipe and nozzle? My last visit to a Shell petrol station in Warrington Road, Rainhill, Merseyside was a rather infuriating and extremely costly experience (£236.00), which I would like to bring to your attention, as I feel it may have been repeated a great many times by other unfortunate motorists using Shell fuel stations. I visited my local Shell station to fill up with diesel on Sunday 7th March 2010, only to discover minutes later to my cost that I had inadvertently put several litres of unleaded petrol into my car’s tank. On inspection later of the exact same pump dispenser I’d used earlier, I saw that both the nozzle and the trigger were coloured black and not green as would indicate petrol. Had the colour codes been applied correctly I would certainly not have made this simple but costly error. I regard it as wholly misleading, deceptive and irresponsible that in a bid to promote a new variant of fuel Shell chose to abandon common sense and set up what is in effect a trap, whereby unsuspecting customers run a much higher risk of ruining their cars by merely adhering to the colour codes of petrol dispensers.

Asked on 5 June 2010 by HT, via email

Answered by Honest John
400 times a day, apparently. I think you might have a case against the service station in that particular instance. Yes, of course it was crassly stupid of both BP and Shell to label their super petrol and super diesel the same. I had this out with BP years ago. Then Shell idiotically went and did the same thing. But in your case they seem to have done even more to confuse "a reasonable man" than merely naming their fuels the same. New Ford Fiesta, Focus, Mondeo, S-Max and Galaxy diesels have Easyfuel fillers that prevent misfuelling diesels with petrol. Aftermarket misfuel prevention devices from: www.caparorightfuel.com; www.sol-ace.co.uk; www.fuelsure.com; www.dieselkeydirect.com
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