Filled up both tanks before the night trunk last Thursday, wandered into the shop to pay.
“Pump number 11 please”
“Sorry mate, number 11 is showing as Zero, must have got it wrong”
I hadn’t got it wrong, and I told her so. After a few seconds of faffing around the cashier next to her says “that guy over there just paid for pump 11”
Turns out a little old man in his Honda Jazz had accidentally (!) just paid for my 280 litres of diesel without noticing he’d paid £395 instead of £16.20
They get him back over and say he has to pay his £16.20 first before they can refund it and I can pay for the fuel. He pays his £16.20 and then they try to refund him the £395, which doesn’t work, apparently for a refund of over £100 it needs to be done at head office. Lots of details are taken and now its my turn.
Turns out that they can only input manual payments, for Unleaded Fuel of under £50. 15 minutes later and lots of calls to Esso HQ and its decided that there’s physically no way they can put the payment through the machine.
After another 10 minutes of questioning and asking me if I can pay cash (that’ll be a no) or them trying to think if they can just pump 280 litres from pump into their tanks and lots of other silly ideas, the manager and faceless person on the phone from HQ say they’ll just have to write off the £395 worth of fuel and put it down to a bad system.
Filled up both tanks before the night trunk last Thursday, wandered into the shop to pay.
“Pump number 11 please”
“Sorry mate, number 11 is showing as Zero, must have got it wrong”
I hadn’t got it wrong, and I told her so. After a few seconds of faffing around the cashier next to her says “that guy over there just paid for pump 11”
Turns out a little old man in his Honda Jazz had accidentally (!) just paid for my 280 litres of diesel without noticing he’d paid £395 instead of £16.20
They get him back over and say he has to pay his £16.20 first before they can refund it and I can pay for the fuel. He pays his £16.20 and then they try to refund him the £395, which doesn’t work, apparently for a refund of over £100 it needs to be done at head office. Lots of details are taken and now its my turn.
Turns out that they can only input manual payments, for Unleaded Fuel of under £50. 15 minutes later and lots of calls to Esso HQ and its decided that there’s physically no way they can put the payment through the machine.
After another 10 minutes of questioning and asking me if I can pay cash (that’ll be a no) or them trying to think if they can just pump 280 litres from pump into their tanks and lots of other silly ideas, the manager and faceless person on the phone from HQ say they’ll just have to write off the £395 worth of fuel and put it down to a bad system.
To say the boss was chuffed is an understatement!
That is really hard to believe, surely to [zb] the cashier would’ve looked at the amount first or noticed the guy coming from the car pump area, or even noticed that a little old man is stereotypically not a trucker. The old guy must have checked it on the chip and pin screen too!
I can also easily believe this happened and have to admit to occasionally being a little lax in checking payments and change in shops and service stations ec’t
Bet I’m more careful after reading this story though
The only thing that surprises me is that a service station has failed to screw a customer, I take it this was not at a motorway service station
It was at a smaller station run by one of the smaller supermarkets, but still with decent HGV parking.
The manager dealing with it was a lovely lady, probably only early 30’s and the whole time they were sorting it (I must have been in there nearly half an hour) she was constantly apologising and seemed very frustrated that they hadn’t spotted it when the guy was paying.
I did offer to give them the company details and even ring the TM to see if they could pay over the phone but she was so seemingly embarrassed by the inconvenience they’d caused me that I guess they just wanted me out of there.
I don’t imagine the gaffer will be chasing it up though.
Slightly different experience from me but along the lines of the little old guy on this story! It’s my daughters birthday coming up so last weekend we went to a large toy shop and spent £68, put’s my visa card in the machine and just as I press the first digit of my PIN I notice it’s showing £668 on the screen!!! that was a simple case of pressing the number 6 twice on the machine! I thought they were all automatic and linked to the till but it turns out on some they actually have to type in the amount on the card machine before they hand it to you
Bridgwater services a few months ago, I started filling the tank but it cut out after about 40 litres and wouldn’t start again. Went in and the girl behind the counter came out to see and eventually had to reset the whole system. I start again and put in another 320 litres and go in to pay. By this time I’m in a bit of a hurry, a different bloke served me so I duly put in the paid and rushed away.
Later when I went to fill in the fuel book I was somewhat suprised to see on the receipt I had only been charged the first 40 litres.
filled up at aral berchem in may - €1108.23, paid for it with my statoil routex card, got the receipt and the bonus stickers as well. when a month later the invoice still hadn’t appeared I called statoil to find out what’s happening. a few days later they called me back to say that apparently the card had been swiped but no transaction had been completed so there wasn’t going to be an invoice
couple of years back a automated bunker site on south coast had a pump go wrong, could fillup and only show a few litres ie 10 or 20, this was for about two weeks, thought it would show the correct amount on the bill but it dident, well word got about and it became the busiest pump of the 4 there with every man and his dog queing for the 1 pump.
I got free Fuel at Hopwood Park a few weeks ago, the idiot i was working for at the time used to meet me to fuel the truck on his credit card, met me at Hopwood, put 400 litres in(£557), went in to pay and they rejected his Amex card, so he told me just to drive off and he’d sort it! Whether he did or not i now have my doubts, i suspect he just got into his car and drove off too… Hasten to add i no longer work for him…
Filled up both tanks before the night trunk last Thursday, wandered into the shop to pay.
“Pump number 11 please”
“Sorry mate, number 11 is showing as Zero, must have got it wrong”
I hadn’t got it wrong, and I told her so. After a few seconds of faffing around the cashier next to her says “that guy over there just paid for pump 11”
Turns out a little old man in his Honda Jazz had accidentally (!) just paid for my 280 litres of diesel without noticing he’d paid £395 instead of £16.20
They get him back over and say he has to pay his £16.20 first before they can refund it and I can pay for the fuel. He pays his £16.20 and then they try to refund him the £395, which doesn’t work, apparently for a refund of over £100 it needs to be done at head office. Lots of details are taken and now its my turn.
Turns out that they can only input manual payments, for Unleaded Fuel of under £50. 15 minutes later and lots of calls to Esso HQ and its decided that there’s physically no way they can put the payment through the machine.
After another 10 minutes of questioning and asking me if I can pay cash (that’ll be a no) or them trying to think if they can just pump 280 litres from pump into their tanks and lots of other silly ideas, the manager and faceless person on the phone from HQ say they’ll just have to write off the £395 worth of fuel and put it down to a bad system.
To say the boss was chuffed is an understatement!
Was this to pay on a bank card or a fuel card? If it’s the latter then they have manual vouchers under the counter (or should do) for events like this and also when the main system goes down. You usually can’t enter a fuel card manually on the till because most garages don’t have the merchant details programmed in so if the card is knackered and doesn’t swipe (for example) then out comes the manual voucher which goes through the card imprinter (like olden days). It sounds like the staff there didn’t know their arse from their elbow. When I was a station manager for Texaco it’d be a sackable offence for that to happen (what happened to you).
