Well I guess this is a phenomenon not prevalent in Bangalore alone but all over India. I can swear on my head that this is prevalent in Pune because I have been a victim to it once. But never after that.


The modus operandi is very simple. There are two guys in the operation. One who fills the petrol (Bunty) and the other who comes to collect the cash (Bublee). Bunty and Bublee would always be standing on the opposite sides so that they can do a bunty and bubli on you
Just before u are about to fill in the petrol with Bunty, Bublee would approach you to distract you by asking one of the following
a) Gaadi bahut achcha hai, mileage kitna deti hai??
b) Cash se payment karega ya card se??Kaun sa card ho?? HP ka he tho aap ko discount milega...

Now if you turn to Bublee, Bunty would start off at the last meter reading instead of zero. Similar questions would be asked when the petrol filling is about to be finished.

So points to be noted.
1) Always keep an eye on what the last guy filled in and whether your meter is set to zero
2) Never Listen to Bublee. He is the only guy who can distract you.
3) If Bunty fills petrol standing in front of you covering the meter, ask him to come to the side or move your vehicle forward.

Now there are times when u might be distracted because of other things and u feel that they havent filled exactly your requirement of petrol, then do this. Its 100% certain to work.
Put the vehicle on your stand, point your finger directly at Bunty's face and scream at the top of your lungs that you saw him pull the trick off the last guy and ask him WTF is he trying to pull this one on you??? (a.k.a Boss mein Alibag see aaya kya, kind of question)
You would get more petrol than you wanted.

My incident:- I had asked the Baner (Pune) petrol pump guy to fill in 200 bucks of fuel and had filled in 150 and Bublee came in and distracted me for the cash. In a couple of seconds, Bunty stopped filling petrol and said he had filled 200.
Parked my bike on the stand and screamed on top of my lungs that I saw him cheat. Suddenly all the guys who had come to fill up the petrol were listening to me. This was a shock to them and he promptly filled up the next 50 without any trouble.
To add a lil insult to their injury I paid them only 150. I told them that the last meter reading I saw was 100 and they filled up only 50 more.

So if you have a feeling that you have been cheated, use your LUNGS

Can't say about HP, but I am willing to pay more to Shell any day for the peace of mind. All other petrol pumps are "Chors"

Lol, I think more people should do this. I try to fill from one or two pumps only. On the rare occassion that I fill petrol in other pumps and they try the Bunty and Bubli trick, I ignore Bubli by giving him the "talk to the hand" routine. Super rude but they are trying to pull a fast one on me ...

One thing that people can do to avoid this is to follow the tankful approach every time. I always top up and ride till the F indicator starts blinking. This usually translates to 9.xx litres on the next refill everytime.

i agree with u..

yes mates its true happen many times with me and once these F!@#%$ filled my half litter Pepsi bottle for 40+ rupee(note that the Fuel price was around 55 rupees/litter)

Decided to use my 5 LTR Can for purchasing petrol

Had a similar exp last week...

Chennai ppl be aware...

1. One HP bunk near MEPZ - Tambaram . I said to fill for 200 rupees. I was all seeing the reading right from 0 when the amount in the meter reading crossed almost 130 rupees. Another guy came near me and said sir give some cloth there are lots of dust near the fuel lid. i turned towards him. i said i will take care that then with his hand he started cleaning. I turned to the filling guy was shocked to see he started filling another auto. I never know he filled for 200 or not. initially he pretended to set the rupees to 200. God knows how much he put.

2. One BP petrol bunk after SPIC in Guindy before ABT maruti showroom. They set and filled for 10 litres. But that time my mileage was not even half.

I had good exp in filling in BP Venkat narayana road one at beginning of Burkit road from VN road. It is good.

But after these exp in Goverment Oil agencies i switched to
Shell . i dont care abt 10 ruppes extra you getting good service,respect and bill even if you dont ask. I damn sure of getting more mileage as im getting exact figures also good quality fuel

I was amazed to see that they not allowing to enter from other way to bunk. i need to enter thro IN only and then i was asked to get down and put stand to get the fuel. Also was getting wishes and respect finally they even asking to pls chk the tyre pressure before u leave showing the corner place.

P.s : Im not getting any commisions from either VN BP or Shell he..he..

A similar sort of incident had happened with me very recently.

Bluevolt was on his charity ride and I was supposed to escort him through the Mumbai city and lead him to Pune highway. I stay at Dadar shivaji park and was supposed to pick him from one of the city - Mira road and drop him at Panvel. I left my place in hurry and realized am running low on fuel.

I pulled over at a decent IO petrol pump bang opposite Mahim station. Two guys were involved in con. An elderly fella filling the petrol and the other one trying to distract me.

It went off something like this..
The elderly fella was on my right side and immediately the other person approached me with a petro card scheme. I told the elderly guy to fill in Rs. 150 worth petrol and got distracted by the other fella. By the time I turned back to the meter, he had put in petrol worth Rs. 170(that's what the meter showed). I got pissed off but didn't shout showing respect to the person and his age. I said fine, I'll pay 170. Not a big deal. But he insisted to make it Rs. 200 (saying sahab 200 ka bhara lo..round figure ho jayegi). I was like..

I said fine. Make it 200. But again, he committed mistake(knowingly/unknowingly only god knows) and now the meter was saying Rs. 212. And he was like.. ohh no.. sorry sahab. Chalo 250 ka kara deta hoo.

That was it. I lost my cool and then there was a big dictionary of holy words opened in front of him. He got shit scared. So scared that he said, sahab aap sirf 150 hi dedo. Chalega. Sorry!

What I want to tell you people from this is, it's difficult to identify and avoid internal tampering of the machines but at least we can pay a little more attention and avoid being looted by these guys.

Always keep an eye on the meter. Make sure it's reset to zero before refueling. Never be in hurry. Don't get distracted by anybody for any reason at least till the petrol is being filled in.

^^Just my two cents

If i understand correctly -
1) Keep an I on Meter all the time no matter wat.
2) Prefer Shell > BPCL > HP >> IOC.
3) Filling in morning will give more fuel as density is higher at lower temps.

I will try to get fuel in bottle next time. I have almost 3 bunks in walking distance from my place. (Leela palace,bangalore). Lets See how much they fill. But nozzle issue will not let us knw if we are cheated of not coz not same dispenser may have smaller nozzle.

Any comments/suggestions i missed?

Hey bro, Thanx for the info abt chennai.........
I would to add some..
The IOC bunk near Adayar depot mostly cheats... I have experienced a lot... They cheat by methods as discussed till now.... The same with HP bunk near the Guindy bus stop.....
The HP bunk inbetween Pallavaram bus stans and Jain Suzuki is pretty reputed for its quality(As far as I heard) and I never had bad experiences with them... Same with the HP bunk near Raddison hotel.... I also use the newly opened HP bunk near greenways road corner.(opp to Raj palace, DONT use the OLD HP BUNK)...
Since I've been using HP regularly, I prefer these bunks....
Chennai Guyz can pour in with their experiences here...

How to Keep an "I" on meter?? :P

I dont think point 3, holds good for indian conditions, and it hardly would make a difference.

One important thing, was the point mentioned by neil, try to fill tank-full as much as possible, so u will be sure of the quantity.

For me that would mean lugging around 17-18 Extra kgs. I own gs150r tank capacity is 15+L

even in chennai it is the same happening they cheat us the vibes on the tank at the beginning of the flow of petrol stops in the middle i have been many times on the street stranded because of this thinking there would be one liter of petrol in it but there they would have just filled up half litre the fraud bunks we should talk with everyone and be aware of those bunks and must avois those bunks

The attention diverting thing is very common. Pretty rampant at some pumps in Hyderabad. I generally do tank full. Otherwise I make them set to the value needed before I open my tank cap.

Though not completely foolproof, it works most of the times unless I get distracted.

This has been the topic of discussion among some of us offline. I generally lookout for COCO pumps or AP Civil Supplies pumps. If the COCO pumps are old I try to avoid them due the possibility of water seepage into the tanks.