Eve Adams's dispute over $6 car wash reached PMO

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Before Eve Adams’s controversial nomination bid in a Toronto-area riding made national headlines, the Prime Minister’s Office received a different kind of complaint about the Conservative MP, involving her behaviour at an Ottawa gas station.

In January, the PMO was informed about a December incident at an Esso gas station, in which Adams was accused of blocking a gas pump with her car for 17 minutes because she wanted a refund on a $6 car wash.

The owner of the gas station told CTV News that he asked Adams “at least four times” if she could move her car to the side, but she refused to do so until she got her refund.

Surveillance video footage from that day shows Adams’s SUV parked in front of one of the gas pump lanes. She is also seen apparently arguing with a man outside her vehicle.

“I politely asked at least four times if she would please pull off to the side,” owner John Newcombe said. “She refused. She rolled up her vehicle window and said: ‘I’ll be answering emails until I get my refund.”’

When Adams got her refund, she said she had demanded it because there was a little ice on her bumper, Newcombe said. “The car was spotless.”

He said Adams later offered a half-hearted apology.

Adams told The Canadian Press that she moved her car twice before parking in front of the gas pump lane.

"The entire time I simply said, look, if I could simply go through the wash a second time, or if not, could they kindly refund the unused car washes I had just bought moments ago," she told CP.

"In any event, I regret what happened and I apologized to Mr. Newcombe many months ago."

Newcombe refuted Adams’s version of events to CP.