Negligence Costed Me Money

I went to a Puma filling station at Ha Matala Maseru, Lesotho on the 15th December and asked for Diesel 50 for R200. About 6 km from the filling station I got an engine malfunction popup alert on the dashboard. Luckily it was a few kilometers from home so I quickly went to stop. The car started cutting the engine sound, I'd switch it on and off a few times but it continued to misfire. The next morning I called a mechanic to have a look and his diagnoses was that there was a problem on the fuel filter. He then asked if I am sure I had filled Diesel or Petrol. I was definitely sure I asked for Diesel but I didn't check to see if indeed the petrol attendant filled my car with diesel or petrol. The mechanic managed to help me start the car and I drove back to the filling station.

I spoke to the manager and told him my story and the suspicion that the car was filled with petrol instead of diesel; he asked to see the fuel tank cap to see if it was labelled correctly and it was boldly written Diesel. The manager quickly apologized and said these kind of mistakes happen all the time and they will get a mechanic right away to come drain out all the petrol in the car and check if the injectors were not damaged. Their mechanic arrived in about an 1,5 hours. He had to completely strip the fuel line to drain out all the petrol and this is not a small job. We got there at 9;30am and this was complete at 5;30pm. I was supposed to leave that morning to head back to Gauteng where I live and work, I was to start my shift at 2pm to 10pm. Therefore I lost income of a full 8 hours because of negligence by the filling station.

Their mechanic requested 2 liters of diesel to clean out the fuel line system and the filling station manager put R240 worth of fuel in the car. The R40 being the fuel to clean the fuel line and the R200 was my reimbur*****t. I had lost full 8 hours from my job but they could not even fill up my full tank as compensation. I even spoke to the owner of the Puma, Mr Thetsane to ask him for the full tank as I had already lost so much time. He told me that will never happen and I can go sue him if I wanted. The petrol attendants are trained to check the labeling on fuel cap; should the owner of the car insist that the attendant should put in what is not labelled on the cap, the attendant is supposed to get their manage to witness this. In my case, I asked to diesel and my cap was labelled diesel, therefore this was pure negligence that costed me a full day’s worth of money.