Revelations that miscalibrated gas pumps have cost Maine consumers hundreds of thousands of dollars are outrageous and have shaken public confidence in the state’s ability to guarantee consumers are getting what they pay for.
The Capitol News Service reported Monday that a station in southern Maine may have overcharged customers $316,637 in a single year.
What’s more, the Maine Department of Agriculture can’t say whether the overcharges are widespread or isolated incidents.
Several lawmakers have already called for hearings to determine whether legislative action is required to ensure the integrity of the system.
They should act quickly. Maine consumers spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on products they assume are fairly weighed and measured.
The Agriculture Department is responsible for ensuring that the measuring and metering devices used by everyone from fuel-oil companies to grocery stores are accurate.
The Weights and Measures Unit has a handful of inspectors to cover the state, plus they train about 20 inspectors hired by 116 municipalities.
The state keeps a database of inspection reports. Unfortunately, that computer system can only search for individual gas stations.
As a result, state inspectors are unable to use that system to detect regional trends or easily link a pattern of overcharging to a particular gas station company.
State officials say they have found no criminal intent on the part of gas station operators to overcharge the public. But the size of the recent discrepancies must leave consumers wondering.
Gas station owners must certainly track how much product they order and how much product they sell. Wouldn’t somebody have noticed that more gasoline was being “sold” than was disappearing from storage tanks?
The Agriculture Department has so far refused to reveal which gas stations were involved.
It should at least be working with the stations to determine how customers who have been ripped off can be reunited with their money.
Most people use debit and credit cards these days, and the number of the gas pump used appears on each receipt.
Perhaps the stations can work with banks and credit card companies to match the names of customers with the errant pumps and reimburse them for gasoline they never received.
If not, then the windfall profits should be turned over to the state to improve its record-keeping system and hire more inspectors.
The Legislature, meanwhile, should shift some of the responsibility for ensuring accuracy to the operators of gas stations.
Perhaps owners should be required to check their pumps once a month. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to obtain a certified one-gallon can and pump out a gallon of gas.
Spot inspections should be used to catch scofflaws and cheaters, who should then receive hefty fines and penalties.
For Maine’s economy to work smoothly, both buyers and sellers need confidence that gallons, ounces and pounds are measured precisely at the point of sale.
rrhoades@sunjournal.com
The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.
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