By Paul Sloth
Journal Times | Posted: Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:00 am
LYONS - This wasn't one of those gas giveaways sponsored by a local radio station.
It wasn't even a special deal that allowed several customers to save a bundle on cheap diesel fuel at the Lyons Shell Plaza, 1415 Mill St., in this Walworth County community, just over the county line from Burlington.
A missing digit dropped the diesel fuel price at this gas station on Saturday to the unheard-of low price of 59 cents per gallon.
It wasn't intentional. It was a mistake that only lasted a little while, but it cost the owner big.
The gas station's owner, Mohinder Singh, accepts the fact that he made the mistake, forgetting to add the number three when he changed the price in his computer to what should have been $3.59 per gallon.
He's just disappointed that people took advantage of it, including some people who are regular customers at the gas station/convenience store.
It also means that Singh, 48, lost more than $4,000 worth of fuel, for which he had already paid.
"I'm so upset, but what can you do," said Singh, who opened the station eight years ago. "I've been in the business since 1991, we never have a problem."
An estimated 50 to 75 customers filled up at the drastically reduced rate, which cost Singh $3 for every gallon.
Singh, who came to this country in 1981 from northern India, started out as a New York City cab driver. He moved to Racine, where he started a family and opened his first gas station in the early 1990s. He's owned gas stations in Milwaukee and Burlington before opening the station in Lyons.
It wasn't easy, at first, opening a business in this rural, predominantly white southeastern Wisconsin community. But through the years, Singh said he has developed a relationship with his customers, some of whom shop daily at the convenience store. He'll give them free coffee, newspapers and ice for parties.
Singh said he enjoys the location of his store in rural Walworth County because it reminds him of the rural farming village where he lived in India's Punjab region. After eight years, he knows many of his customers by name and by car.
On Saturday afternoon, Singh changed the price on his station's only pump that dispenses diesel fuel, mistakenly leaving out the number three.
From about noon Saturday to 7 a.m. Sunday, people took roughly 1,500 gallons of diesel fuel, Singh said. When Singh arrived at the store Sunday, a warning light indicated that diesel fuel tank had dropped to 200 gallons.
Singh suspects that when people realized the pump price was incorrect, they told others. Most people came to fill up after Singh had left for the day Saturday, he said. His in-store cameras captured images of people filling up containers. One person alone took 200 gallons of fuel at the wrong price - $700 worth of fuel.
While he might not be able to do anything directly to recoup his losses, Singh wishes more people would do what one regular customer was honest enough to do - come back and pay the right amount.
Jordan Koster knew something wasn't right when he filled the nearly empty 30-gallon tank on his diesel pick-up truck Saturday.
"He said, 'What the heck, I paid 10 bucks for a full tank,'" his father Scott said Wednesday when he stopped in at the convenience store for coffee. The fill-up should have cost around $100.
The Koster's farm in the area is not far from Singh's gas station and they're regular customers.
Jordan Koster, 18, called an employee who was working that day to tell her that he was sure he underpaid. The clerk told him she would wait for Singh to return Monday to change the price on the computer, not realizing how serious the situation was, Singh said.
Scott Koster told his son, a Burlington High School graduate who now attends Gateway Technical College, that he had to make things right. He agreed and stopped in Monday to pay the full amount.
While he's proud of his son, Scott Koster is disappointed that others got away with it.
"I don't understand how anybody could have done this, could come in here to get coffee and look him in the eye and not do the right thing," Scott Koster said.