Beware: Deceptive Gas Price at Mechanicsville Fas Mart Fooled Me

In doing some spring cleaning around the house, I realized that after 30+ years in the same house it was finally full. I learned the old saying a long time ago, “A place for everything, and everything in it’s place“.

Well, I no longer have a place for everything so it is impossible to put everything in it’s place.

A good part of this is due to the fact that my wife and I own a business in Yorktown. We opened the business in 2002 in Washington Square Shopping Center in Yorktown and in 2008 we moved to a larger space in the same shopping center. And during much of the earlier years owning the business we kept the house in Mechanicsville and an apartment in Yorktown near the business. That meant we had to buy all new “stuff” for the Yorktown apartment because we still lived in the house.

Eventually I took an IT job in Richmond because the health insurance premiums were killing us. So my wife runs the business day to day. My daughter attended Christopher Newport University and was able to commute to class. She got married and our son moved back to Richmond with me to finish school at Lee Davis. So we had a very large 3 bedroom apartment that my wife was pretty much the sole occupant. And it wasn’t cheap. So we decided to give up the apartment and my wife would commute. Economically, that made sense. But it also meant that we had furniture and dishes and pots and pans coming out of our ears. So we kept some of the newer furniture to replace some of the older stuff in the house, sold some and gave some away. But we still wound up with far too much stuff.

And then in 2011 we found a free standing building for lease across from the shopping center we had been in for nearly a decade. It also featured private offices, so I had a surplus of office partitions, desks and more stuff that didn’t fit. So that came to the house in Mechanicsville. I hate to sell it or get rid of it because I may need it again some day.

So I finally broke down and rented a storage unit last week and have made countless trips back and forth moving the excess stuff out of the house.

I was below a quarter of a tank of gas and on my trips to and from the storage unit I noticed that the gas prices pretty much everywhere were $2.38. Everywhere except the Fas Mart – Valero Station at 6110 Mechanicsville Tpk. This is at Battlefield Commons and the station is next to Awful Arthur’s. As you can see from the photo above, the price appears to be $2.28 there. My truck is a Dodge Ram 4X4 Quad Cab and the gas tank is massive. I believe it holds 26 gallons, but seems to hold more the higher gas prices rise. So I was happy to save ten cents per gallon.

My wife usually fills up on Sunday to start the week for her commutes to Yorktown, so I told her the Fas Mart was ten cents below everyone else. And she went out of her way to go there to fill up. And when she got home, she looked at the receipt and it showed the price she paid was actually $2.38.

Now I’ll be honest. I don’t usually compare the price on the sign to the price on the pump. I will from now on, but I trust people to be honest.

So I went back down there a couple of days ago to find out what was going on.

The single sign sits back a ways from Rt 360 and is on the opposite end of the property from the entrance on 360. There is a lot of green grass between the road and the sign. And even when you pull up to the pump the sign is a long ways away.

So I drove up as close to the sign as I could get and took the picture below.

And even at that distance, the price appears to be $2.28.

It is only when I zoomed in on the sign from a few feet away that I could see what was going on.

Yep, it is in red. And yep, it shows that this is some kind of “Member’s Price”. But remember, I drove up past the pumps, right beside the sign and zoomed the camera way in. In the picture without zooming, it looks like the price is $2.28 for Regular unleaded, $2.38 for Mid grade and $2.95 for premium.

I am sure there are no laws being broken here because if you walk up to the sign so you can read it, it is pretty clear. But I believe they suckered me in.

There is a Fas Mart across from Lee Davis that has the prices displayed just like everyone else. Regular 87 Octane, 89 Octane and 93. It is clear when you pull into the Lee Davis Fas Mart what the price is.

And while there is nothing illegal going on at 6110 Mechanicsville Tpk, I will never buy gas there again. Fool me once – shame on you. There will not be a second time.

Caveat emptor. Buyer Beware!