Esso customers overcharged at pump

Esso customers overcharged at pump
By Matt Millham, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Gas prices inadvertently hit a new high Saturday when a clerical error nearly quadrupled the price Americans using fuel ration cards paid for fuel at Esso stations in Germany.

The mistake left customers shelling out anywhere from $7.68 to $12.52 per gallon at stations throughout the country for the entire day.

"Due to an input error, prices for all grades of fuel purchased at Esso Stations throughout Germany on Saturday … were inaccurate and resulted in customers being overcharged," according to an AAFES news release. "The error was corrected at midnight Saturday night and only affected transactions on Saturday, December 20th."

An AAFES employee caused the snafu by plugging the wrong price into a central database. The mistake resulted in each liter of gas being priced as if it were a gallon, magnifying prices by a factor of 3.785 — the number of liters in a gallon.

"Any customer who purchased Gas from an ESSO station on Saturday, December 20, 2008, will be reimbursed the difference between what they should have been charged and what they were charged at any AAFES fuel ration card issue and activation site," the AAFES release said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59591