No_Reporto

Hah. That's also the argument for a UK pint to a US pint. I also love the restaurants that sell a "short" and "tall" beer. I'm not paying an extra $2 for the same amount of beer just to put it into a taller glass. Just give me a proper pint.

A coworker did actually respond to a W&M complaint at a bar where they offered a pint in a 12 oz. glass. No. A US pint is 16 oz. They had to get new glasses.

I personally have very rarely run into anyone intentionally trying to cheat the system. Most inspection failures are just negligence and bad practices/lazy employees.

One thing to point out, is every state has their own W&M program, though they are primarily based from the same system of rules. There is no Federal W&M agency, but the handbooks we all base our state programs off of is from the National Conference of Weights and Measures (NCWM). I say this because my state is known as a consumer protection forward state. Some other agencies are... lacking?

I would never find a station in my state that routinely shorts customers. You fail an inspection, you get it fixed. If they don't, we shut the station down.

Also, it is next to impossible for stations today to intentionally doctor their pump meters as they are all electronic and need to be adjusted by a technician and a computer. The old mechanical meters could be messed with by changing gears, but many gas station owners today wouldn't even know how to open their pumps. The biggest thing you should be worried about in those "no name" stations is water in their tanks, because again that just comes down to negligence.

Yes, actually. Testing procedures get as accurate as accounting for the coefficient of expansion of the stainless steel test prover based on the current temperature, the amount of seconds to rest between tests, and touching off the last drip.

Speaking of fun consumer complaints. I had another coworker who had to follow up on a woman who said her 4.5 qt crock pot she just bought didn't actually hold 4.5 qt. He had to buy one and test it.

We measure gas pumps in cubic inches. The tolerance is +/- 6 cubic inches in a 5 gallon test sample, which equates to a little over a tablespoon per gallon. They are one of the most accurate pieces of equipment out there (1/3 of a percent error).