tl;dr

A gas station I went to had false prices on GasBuddy, and when I changed the prices, they were automatically overwritten by the ‘owner’ of the gas station.

On my way out of Connecticut, driving south, I needed to get some gas. I’ve had the habit of checking GasBuddy for my gas. GasBuddy has generally pointed me in the right direction for cheap gas.

Spotting the local low price of $2.82 per gallon (when everything around was over $3) at this gas station, and noting that it was roughly along my path, I put it into my navigation.

I pulled in to this “Pilot” gas station only 20 minutes out of West Haven, and immediately, I notice that the “$2.82” price for credit is not quite true. The giant sign over the station proclaims “$2.85”. At the gas pump, a small sticker to the left states that the credit card price is a $0.06 per gallon increase over the cash price.

Annoyed that the GasBuddy price was incorrect (presumably, just out of date), I go in and change it. $2.85 for cash, $2.91 for credit. Now, other drivers won’t be scammed, and I feel a little better. That should have been the end of it.

I look away from my phone to open the fuel door and get ready to gas up, and look back at it a moment later.

In the 30 seconds or so after I reported the price for the gas at the station, BOTH the cash and credit price have been RESET BACK TO $2.82. GasBuddy also notes who posted the gas price. In this case, it was “Owner”.

I set the price AGAIN to $2.85 and $2.91, and it is set by the owner AGAIN, this time, to $2.85 for both cash and credit.

It’s clear to me that the person or business in charge of this gas station was using or paying for some automated system to control the price that GasBuddy reports for his station.

If the price was outdated when I arrived, that would have been fine. GasBuddy relies on crowdsourced information, and I didn’t remember how many hours GasBuddy stated had gone by since the price was updated. However, seeing the price being automatically changed following a user-reported price on GasBuddy to a price lower than advertised for any method of payment, it is clearly just automated fraud and false advertisement.

The pump that I was at didn’t even give me any gas. I inserted my card twice, and both times, I was given a “Just a moment” message by the screen. The first time, in French, and the second time, in English.

Pardon my French, but I was ****ing pissed to learn about and personally exeperience automated fraud in GasBuddy price listings. GasBuddy doesn’t seem to be at fault, however, knowing that some percentage of the prices listed are fraudulent, one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.

Further research:

Wanting a reliable source of gas station prices, and to figure out who was responsible for this automated price fraud, I looked around.

OPIS

A Quora answer, referencing this blog post stated that Google Maps (likely) gets its prices from “OPIS (Oil Price Information Service)”.

In the comment section for that blog post, which was written in 2017, someone commented that in 2013, a company named OPIS acquired GasBuddy.

OPIS’s website and services are geared towards gas station owners and people who trade gasoline commodities on the stock market?

I found a product of theirs called PricePro, which offers the ability for owners to change prices quickly, but it does not make any mention of tie-ins to consumer-facing gas-finding apps.

This makes sense, as according to Wikipedia, OPIS is no longer tied to GasBuddy since 2016.

This post is no longer about the gas prices, but I was still going down this rabbit hole.

GasBuddy

In 2017, GasBuddy was involved in a lawsuit that exposed that they sold user location data for less than a penny per user.

Googling “who owns GasBuddy” reports that as of April 2021, PDI bought GasBuddy.

I still don’t have an answer for what caused the prices to be updated like they were, but I will leave my research as-is.