And to go over what we've unearthed this week: on Tuesday, we took an empty fifty pound cylinder to the BWEL Depot on Sarstoon Street to fill it up for ourselves. According to the Bureau of Standards, a 100 pound cylinder should be filled with 11 gallons of butane.
It weighed 41.6 pounds when it was empty and after we witnessed it being filled with eleven gallons, we weighed it again, and it came up to 85.2 pounds. That means they had put in 43.6 pounds, 6.4 pounds less than they should have, shorting us eight dollars and six cents.
On Tuesday evening we bought two new hundred pound butane tanks and called BWEL and Gas Tomza for them to be picked up at a residence, and taken to be filled.
The BWEL cylinder - for which we paid $128.00 delivered, weighed 74.6 pounds empty and 162.4 pounds full, meaning the weight of the butane was 87.8 pounds, 12.2 pounds short of the hundred that should be in there, shorting us fifteen dollars and sixty-two cents ($15.62). BWEL's country manager Leonel Reyes has said flatly he will not refund us because he does not trust our test because we did not nicely ask him to participate, which is just the point: it had to be a surprise operation to accurately simulate the consumer experience.
The Gas Tomza cylinder was worse. Empty it weighed 73.4 pounds, and after they returned it to us, it weighed 143.6 pounds, meaning they had only put in 70.2 pounds, shorting us 29.8 pounds, a value of thirty-seven dollars and fifity-five cents ($37.55). Tomza has not responded to our requests for a comment.
We'll keep following up on the story as we push for some type of short term remedial measure - such as the installation of a Bureau of Standards certified weighing scale at the Gas Depots.
