Your car dies a mile from home. You paid for regular gas, but now it’s coughing like it just smoked a cigar. Sounds like a horror story, right? For drivers in North Carolina, it was very real. A Refuel station mixed up its tanks and they ended up with diesel in their gas. But one driver made a smarter call than most—he contacted the local news station. What happened next was rare: justice.

As my colleague Barnell Anderson reported the news when a Refuel in Apex suffered a tank mixup in late March—when a delivery driver poured diesel in gas tanks, and gas in diesel tanks. At least 50 cars took in the wrong fuel before the station caught the mistake. One driver, Phen Wolfe, said, “I got half a mile from my house and I got stranded for the next three hours.”

Wolfe brought his truck to a Toyota dealer, where mechanics found diesel in the gas tank. “I checked my receipt and it said I had purchased regular fuel.” His repair bill? Just under $2,000. When Refuel offered to pay—but only with a waiver releasing them from future responsibility—alarm bells went off in Wolfe’s head. “I put on the brakes and said I don’t agree with the verbiage in this contract,” he told WRAL.

Refuel rewrites policy after diesel in gas tank mix-up

Wolfe contacted WRAL’s 5 On Your Side, the news station’s consumer advocacy unit known for turning complaints into wins. “WRAL put in a little statement on how to contact Refuel, and within 20 minutes I sent off an email.” 5 On Your Side then got Wolfe’s mechanic to put his concerns in writing. It worked. “By seven the next morning I had a new liability waiver and they included language that if there was a lingering issue tied specifically to this event, that Refuel would still honor and pay for those charges.”

WRAL’s work didn’t just fix a problem—it changed the policy. Refuel, for its part, owned the mistake. “We acted immediately,” a spokesperson said. The company blamed a third-party hauler for delivering diesel into the gasoline tank and vice versa. Still, they added, “We take full responsibility for ensuring our customers are taken care of.”

Fuel mixup mistake turns into a rare consumer win

In stories like this, drivers usually eat the cost. The car dies, the bill shows up, the company ghosts. But not this time. Thanks to a savvy driver and WRAL’s consumer advocacy team, Refuel stepped up. And Phen Wolfe’s truck now has coverage for any damage tied to that day’s diesel disaster. For life. See WRAL’s latest coverage of the incident in the video embedded below: