SahwaFamily ‘banned from more than 1,000 petrol stations’ amid fuel theft row
ManjushriFirst off, I live in the USA and I haven’t seen a gas station where you could pump without paying first in at least 20 years. I’m currently living in one of the more rural areas of the country and every pump has a card reader so you can pay right at the pump without even going inside. I sometimes see old stickers on the pumps that point out that leaving without paying is a crime, but I cannot imagine how anyone could actually do this. The pumps will not dispense fuel until you pay.
This tells me that the whole purpose of the set up described in the article as a way for this security company to scam people. The technology to prevent driving off without paying is decades old. There’s no reason for this situation to exist.
Second…
The “stress and anxiety” from the situation led to the couple paying DCBL the debt in order to “just move on from it”.
This perfectly describes the business model of debt collection companies. Harass people until they pay whether they really owe any money or not.
u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)First off, I live in the USA and I haven’t seen a gas station where you could pump without paying first
And I live in Slovakia and haven’t yet seen pre-paid gas station either.
You pump the gas, go in, tell the cashier the pump number, pay, go back and leave.
P03 LockeYou pump the gas, go in, tell the cashier the pump number, pay, go back and leave.
You’ve described post-pay pumps, which is how they used to do it 20-25 years ago. This is how pump theft happens: They pump the gas… aaaand run off.
HumaniusA long time ago, I used to work at a gas station when post-pay was allowed. All of the pumps required the cashier to activate them when somebody picked up the nozzle, but it was just expected that you hit the button to allow them to pump first. Most of the time, it’s just a normal transaction. Sometimes, you realized some asshole stole gas when the next guy was at the pump.
Enough of this happened, especially during periods of high gas prices, that my boss would say “prepay is required now”, and we’d tell them they have to come inside first. Eventually, paying with credit cards was so popular, and cash transactions were so rare, that nobody allowed post-pay anymore. There wasn’t a point, when the risk was people would steal gas, and it’s so easy to just stick a CC in a slot.
So, yeah, there’s locks on the pumps, but if post-pay is the norm, it doesn’t really matter.