A Florida woman says “bad gas” she purchased in Tifton June 6 ruined the fuel system of her family’s Volvo and has cost her and her insurance company thousands of dollars to repair. A spokesman with Georgia’s Department of Agriculture said an inspector was sent to the gas station and samples examined at a lab didn’t indicate any foreign material in the gasoline.

Elizabeth Couch said she, her husband and her 4-year-old daughter were travelling from Tallahassee to Atlanta two weeks ago and bought gasoline for their 2007 Volvo at a local service station. She said that 10 miles later, the car malfunctioned.

“With gas, you obviously don’t get what you pay for,” Couch said. “I would have thought that at $4 per gallon, we would at least receive quality gas.”

Couch complimented the GSP trooper who allowed her family to sit in his patrol car during their wait for AAA to arrive and the Tift County sheriff’s deputy who responded.

Couch said she filed a formal complaint with the Department of Agriculture and someone there told her an inspector would be sent to the service station to test the fuel.

“I am supposed to get a report on what the levels were,” Couch said.

Couch said that she and her husband spent a total of $1,200 to have the car towed from Macon to Tallahassee, to rent a car in Atlanta and to pay over and beyond what their car insurance company didn’t pay for repairs.

Arty Schronce of the Georgia Department of Agriculture said a state inspector was sent to the station June 20 where Couch said she and her husband filled up their vehicle.

“They took the samples to the lab and we did not find any water in the gas or any foreign material,” he said. “If they are having problems, it’s not from the gas they got there.”

According to a “Fuel Inspection Fact Sheet” furnished by the Georgia Department of Agriculture, 24 inspectors work out of that agency’s Fuel and Measures department. Of the 141,659 gasoline pumps in Georgia, 119,012 at 12,279 stations in the state were inspected last year. As a routine, each station is inspected every 18 months. In the period January through May of last year, the department received 637 calls from consumers reporting problems with fuel and stations. During the same period this year, the department has received 1,053 such calls. The number of complaints the department received about pumps/gasoline in 2007 was 1,415 with some of those complaints concerning quality (water, sludge, wrong octane, etc.) and some were about possible shorting. Of the reports concerning stations shorting customers, only 5 percent turned out to be valid, according to the report.

In 2007, the department locked down 16,941 pumps with leaking nozzles, malfunctioning nozzles, lights out on digital numbers, shorting customers beyond the tolerance margin and those dispensing gasoline with water, sludge and other foreign ingredients.

Schronce said gasoline customers in Georgia are urged to call 1-800-282-5852 to report problems with gasoline and to record the number off of the pump and save their receipt and write down the name and address of the station where they purchased the fuel.

Couch said she is convinced the gas caused the problems with her car that only had 5,000 miles on it. She said the mechanic who worked on the vehicle and their insurance company “deemed it bad gas.” She said the car was under warranty and she believes the insurance company would not have paid to repair the car if she or her husband’s negligence had caused the problems with the car’s fuel system.

Couch questions whether the Department of Agriculture’s testing June 20 of the fuel being distributed at the station proves anything about the quality of the fuel she and her husband purchased on June 6.

“What can consumers do to protect themselves?” Couch asked. “No one seems to have any advice.”