I feel my letter is too verbose and need help revising it. And so you can picture what I mean by island I’ll draw a poor diagram located at photobucket
Yellow box should be cars with tank on passenger side
blue box should be cars with tank on drivers side
Please remember in NJ it is illegal for anyone but a pump operator to fuel your car.
With today’s fuel prices, price is my main concern when it comes to where to get my gas. I know that there are very little differences in the actual gasoline provided.
However I try to avoid going to Exxon as often as as I can and prefer to go to WaWa.
On 5/22 I had the opportunity to visit you store
located at 602 Black Horse Pike and I need to comment on my experience.
I don’t know the time I arrived but it was after 11pm. There was one island open and one person attending to the pumps. I do not have a complaint with that because I understand it is a way of keeping your costs down so you can continue to provide less expense gas.
What I do have a problem with is there was no attempt to organize the cars waiting for gas.
Normally when I go to a gas station cars line up so their tank is facing the pumps. This leads people with the tank on the driver’s side on one side of the island and the other people on the other side of the island. however this was not the case on Thursday.
Instead there was people pulling into the islands so they were facing a car already there.
When it was my turn to fuel I pulled up to the rear pump and saw the car in front of me leave so I asked the attendant if I should pull up, He said yes. I started to pull forward and saw a car waiting in line start to pull towards the pump I wanted but they were facing the wrong way. What I mean by this is the fuel door was on the passengers side not the drivers so they were going the wrong way. I honked my horn a few times as I slowly moved forward and despite giving me an annoyed look the driver stopped moving and backed into the waiting line.
What I would suggest is you install signs at the entrance to the fuel area saying one way traffic only so you have all cars going in one direction.
As to the situation, it sounds like it was a one off scenario at a high traffic time, and another car driver not showing appropriate courtesy. I would not expect the station owner to install signes immediately - I would suggest the intent of the letter should be to raise the issue with them, and provide a possible solution so they can consider and investigate. It’s also a good idea to explain why this would be good for them as a business to act on your suggestion.
I would also question whether your suggestion would actually work - here in Australia cars have fuel caps on different sides of the car depending on the make. People try to align their vehicle so the cap faces the island - your suggestion above would not work for everyone depending on which way they entered the forecourt.
Also, is the forecourt large enough for manouvers to be made to change direction if you arrive facing the ‘wrong’ way? It may be an impractical suggestion.
Would I bother to send this letter? I guess, if it had bothered me enough - it won’t have a chance of changing unless I do, but I think I would have shrugged this one off.
Well there were multiple cars going the wrong way. That is one of the things that ticked me off. There was a queue to get into the filling area and people were not going the proper way.
To elaborate…
My tank is on the drivers side door so I should have gone toward the right side of the island so it would be facing the pumps. I could not do that because the two cars on that side were facing toward the street meaning their fuel tanks were on the passenger side. I had to go towards the store then enter a queue about 8 deep to wait for a pump. While I was waiting I saw other drivers leave their queue to take up the front pump on my side by going the wrong way.
If when you entered the card with tanks on the passenger side go to yellow areas and the cars with tanks on the right go to blue they would both have the tanks next to the pumps.
Sure, but only if there is only one entrance to the station. Here anyway you can enter through two entrances depending on which side of the road you are driving and turn in from and want to leave by - particularly if it’s on a corner. You’d need signs at these driveways to close one off (entrance only), as well as marked signs to indicate which side of the island you want them to drive. This may cause additional bottlenecks if there is not enough room to manouver on the forecourt, and also if there is only room for one car at a time to leave the station - you will end up waiting behind someone turning left when you want to go right. Anyway, I can see your frustration, I just don’t know if I’d go to all this effort! Still, someone has to I guess!
Why does it matter? My tank is on the right hand side of the car but if the only available spot means I pull in on the right of the pump I just pull the hose over the boot and fill it that way. Similarly if their was a huge queue for right hand side tanks and a short queue for left hand side tanks I would join the shorter queue.
