They fueled up at a Bucks County Wawa, then their cars broke down. Who will pay for repairs?

Marissa O’Neill pulled into the Richboro Wawa around 6:30 a.m. last Wednesday.

It was a routine stop at her neighborhood store: She was about to drive her 9-year-old daughter to an overnight Cub Scout camp, and the gas tank of her Honda minivan was near empty.

“I filled up, got a cup of coffee, and off we went,” O’Neill said.

As she approached the Lancaster-area camp about two hours later, “all of a sudden, I’m hitting the gas, it’s not driving,” O’Neill said.

The check-engine light turned on. The van sounded “like a dirt bike,” O’Neill said. And then the car just died.

The 41-year-old is one of dozens of drivers, according to local mechanics and consumers, who got gas at the Bucks County Wawa last week and then had their cars stop running properly or break down completely.

Mechanics say the repairs range from $3,000 to $4,500, depending on the level of damage and the make and model of the car. At least one customer said he was told repairs could cost around $10,000.

Wawa is aware of “an issue with the fuel equipment” that impacted one tank, Wawa spokesperson Lori Bruce said in a statement.

Wawa took “immediate steps” to fix the problem once it was identified, Bruce said, and there is no ongoing impact on gas customers. The company is working with its equipment manufacturer to investigate exactly what happened, Bruce said, and nail down the specific time frame during which customers may have been impacted.

“At this time, we believe that this was an isolated incident that may have affected a very limited number of customers,” Bruce said.

Owners and managers at three auto shops near the Richboro Wawa said they have repaired or are in the process of repairing more than 30 cars that had contaminated gas in their tanks after fueling at the store.

“Some of them are completely not running,” said Greg Millevoi, owner of Millevoi Brothers Richboro Automotive Inc. “Some run but run very rough.”

“I’ve never seen a thing this extreme,” in terms of the number of people impacted, said Matthew Gillis, an owner at Carvers Garage in Richboro who has been a mechanic for 35 years. Every time the phone rings, he said, he’s waiting for the caller to ask about the contaminated gas, and he’s had to turn customers away.

Impacted vehicles have needed new fuel pumps, fuel injectors, spark plugs, and ignition coils, the mechanics said, and the vehicle’s fuel systems need to be flushed out.

Wawa has a “quality fuel guarantee,” meaning the company will pay for repairs if a mechanical problem is proven to be caused by its gas. If any customers think they fall into this category, Bruce said, the company encourages them to submit a claim on its fuel guarantee page.

Several impacted customers said that despite Wawa’s pledge, their ordeal seems far from resolved.

O’Neill, whose car broke down en route to Cub Scout camp, said she has already put out $700 — $500 for towing and $200 for a Lancaster mechanic to diagnose the problem without fixing it. She ended up having the car towed back to Kevin’s Auto Richboro, where manager Kevin Pfeiffer said they’re working on a dozen cars with contaminated fuel.

O’Neill tried to get a rental car, but she said an Enterprise manager told her they were out of seven-passenger cars in her area. She, her husband, and their three children have been “managing” in the meantime, she said, and can use his smaller Honda CR-V after he gets home from his construction job.

O’Neill, who works remotely for a law firm, said she’d like more information from Wawa.

If she is able to find a rental car that can fit her family, “will they cover a rental car? Will they cover the two tows?” she said. “We’re supposed to go on vacation next week. Do we have to cancel our vacation?”

“I feel like I’m stuck in limbo,” she added, “and I have been since Wednesday.”

Alex Mikhelson, 43, of Holland, is the same boat. He got gas at the Richboro Wawa twice on Thursday. After a Target run Friday evening with his wife and three children, he said their Toyota Land Cruiser started “violently shaking,” and the dashboard displayed a message saying the engine power was on low.

Mikhelson took the car to his local Toyota dealer. As of Thursday morning, he said the mechanic there estimated repairs on the new SUV could cost around $10,000, as the issue affected the fuel injector, fuel pump, gas tank, and other areas.

That’s a price tag that he and his wife, an audiologist, would struggle to afford.

“It’s not a time right now for anyone to pay these excessive costs out of pocket, even if we were to be reimbursed,” he said. “It’s an unexpected expense at no fault of our own.”

Mikhelson would rather not file a claim with his insurance company, but he was considering it Thursday. He said he figured that might be “the path of least resistance.”

Joan Lenahan said she’s out $4,200 after the Jeep Cherokee Trailblazer that her teenage son drives started “bucking” Friday night. Her son, Connor, had gotten gas at the Richboro Wawa on Thursday.

She took their car to Millevoi Brothers, and the car was fixed and back home by Wednesday. But the family’s headache isn’t over entirely.

As she was filling out Wawa’s claim form, Lenahan realized she didn’t have the receipt from the gas purchase — only a screenshot of a bank transaction. Like many consumers, and most 17-year-olds, her son didn’t take a receipt when he fueled up. Lenahan called Wawa’s corporate office to request an original receipt and was waiting to hear back Thursday.

While many of the family’s struggles this past week were “first-world problems,” Lenahan said the experience has impacted where they will fuel up in the future.

She said: “As a family, we decided Sunoco it is.”