PetroBuddi prevents fuel mixing, saves money

I READ your article “Carelessness at the petrol pump” on Monday, February 26.

This in fact happens more times than one thinks and the rand result is some R80 million per annum in losses to the individual dealers/retailers.

Because petrol is bought and sold at a governed price the losses are a bottomline loss to these retailers.

So they are bleeding to a greater or lesser degree and yes, the liability lies with them.

Sometimes it is negligence on the petrol attendants’ side but sometimes the customer is also at fault but at the end of the day the garage owner sorts it out.

Because of high risk at the petrol stations there are high insurance premiums with high excesses.

In our research a lot of dealers/ retailers just pay for it out of their own pocket so as to satisfy a customer quickly and seldom claim because the cost is under the excess.

We have heard and have affidavits from dealers saying that the cost of repairing a fuel mix can be as much as R80 000. How does one recover from this? Well, you don’t. You charge the attendant and deduct from his salary the cost until he leaves and goes to work on another forecourt.

Some eight years ago we invented and patented a device called PetroBuddi, that prevents the mixing of fuels on petrol forecourts.

This product has been endorsed by Numsa as a job-saver as it seems their members, who are petrol attendants, bear the brunt of this way of working..

The device is very simple and moves the liability away from the attendant to the customer.

How it works is this: The attendant hands the wireless device to the customer who not only chooses the fuel grade but also the rand amount.

On entry the device will only activate the pump that the customer has chosen.

So only that nozzle will dispense fuel that the customer has chosen. Simple.

The insurance industry will, because of the lower risk, bring down their premiums, so it is a win-win situation for the customer, attendant and dealer/ retailer.

The PetroBuddi is also an environmentally friendly device because there is no contamination, and no wastage going into our drainage and water systems.

So it’s green and ticks the oil industry box where they must allocate a percentage of their turnover to greenfriendly products and solutions.

Our company is working with a likeminded business in Cape Town to take PetroBuddi to the forecourts across the country.

We have the solution to take care of this problem, saving money as well as inventory. Kevin P Ashton

Device prevents the mixing of fuels on petrol forecourts