Me thinks that some one is having a laugh!!!!!
They drop a clanger, then expect to wriggle their way out of it by charging the next person, err, yeah right!!!!
I would have loved every minute of it ( but I'm like that) & god damn it I would NOT pay for some elses fuel or anything else for that matter, and would have kicked up such a fuss with all and sundry especially as being accused of trying to nick / steal something......
Hay, Hay just my two pennies worth - well done for standing your ground and too right!
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Well, now you know the CCTV is kaput, put the word out amongst your friends (but not on here!) that free fuel can be had at this location.
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Not condoning the action of the Attendant (and PU gives excellent advice - go to it) but do not the Petrol firms make the Attendants responsible for shortcomings i.e. losses come out of their wages. Which is probably why an aggressive approach?
DVD
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Wouldn't it be illegal to dock the cashiers wages nowadays?
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I was once filling up when the car next to me drove off without paying. What amused me was they only nicked £5 of fuel. Surely if you are driving off anyway you fill up!!
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A guy who used to do some work for me (sadly dead now) used to work a a service station, there were so many drive offs at one point that the Manager there (he had the site on licence from a very well known fuel company)threatened to dock the attendants pay. Another lad who worked there was known for chasing offenders on foot ! Both these lads I would have trusted with next month's salary worked hard for next to nothing and eventually moved on because of the Manager's attitude. I can understand why check out staff can get very worked up if they work for a Dickensian owners no excuse for being so rude and unprofessional about it though.
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Wouldn't it be illegal to dock the cashiers wages nowadays?
Depends how vicious their lawyers were when they wrote the contract of employment. Hands up everyone who reads all contracts carefully before signing them.... (this is an excellent way to spot lawyers, btw)
I do remember waiting for ever in a supermarket petrol queue After 10 mins (no, I'm not kidding) I set a time limit - if they didn't offer to accept my cash within the next 2 mins then I would assume they didn't want it and drive off. The queue then accelerated, of course.
Next time its a 1 minute deadline.
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"Hands up everyone who reads all contracts carefully before signing them.... (this is an excellent way to spot lawyers, btw)"
Wrote me own (tee hee)
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\"Hands up everyone who reads all contracts carefully before signing them.... (this is an excellent way to spot lawyers, btw)\" Wrote me own (tee hee)
I have some sympathy with the plight of the petrol attendant as my wife works part time in a 24 hour Safeway/Petrol Station to supplement our income whilst she trains to be a teacher.
After checking the car against a list of known offenders, there is simply nothing she can do about drive-offs to prevent them. She is inside, they are outside. In addition, I would counsel her against ever trying to prevent one physically in case she came to any harm.
So I think stereotypes about shoddy workers and docking wages are a little unfair. Just think - she could be teaching your little ones in a few years!
Having said that, I sympathise with the original poster. The staff and manager were well out of line there. Well done for standing your ground.
A petrol station I often call at only allows the pumps furthest away to be used by pre-paying customers. This seems a sensible compromise. Perhaps a sensible industry standard would be to have the furthest pumps as the 24 hour type where you use your credit card and the nearest pumps the traditional type where you go in and pay...
...or do like they do in France where you pay as you leave in your car and a barrier prevents you leaving otherwise? No? Too much like common sense for GB :) (like putting a coin into the trolley to ensure it gets back to where it is supposed to)
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Reports of Making Off Without Payment (MOWP) are a real pain in the proverbial for the old bill. It seems that certain forecourts are targeted by regulars and word gets round. " We've got it on CCTV " Well for one CCTV quality is usually lousy. CCTV tapes have to be seized and sent for stills to be taken off and statements and Crime Reports completed.
There are False plates, hooded tops and non registered vehicles.
The answer is quite simple. Pre pay delivery. The fuel companies can afford it. Tradition is a wonderful thing but we must be practical. If adequate crime prevention methods are not taken why should a Police response be expected. Same thing applies to Credit Card fraud. The major banks and financial institutions seem reluctant to use state of the art technology or even a picture yet when the cards are stolen and then used in crime the complaints come flooding in.
Strangely MOWP did not carry a power of arrest BUT it does now. So for all those who think of leaving without payment for whatever reason think of the embarrasement factor! I do agree however that waiting in a long queue of grocery shoppers is extremely infuriating and have felt like it myself.
Fullchat
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Fullchat,
What would have been your response if sent to the above incident
(note use of Police type words - too much time in custody units this Christmas)
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PU
I think stern words with the cashier and supervisor. Perhaps some advice as to how to prevent it happening again.
Having said that we all can a have a bad day but saying " sorry" costs nothing.
Fullchat
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Fortunately I am not the sort of person to 'go off on one' and could see the ridiculousness of it all after 10 minutes or so. I have spent 30 years dealing with the public and can't believe the way I sometimes get treated as a customer, if I reacted the way these people did I wouldn't have a job.
I suppose that really I was more amused than anything else, I really do like watching these fools dig themselves in even deeper, especially when I know that I'm in the right!
All this experience has done really is to confirm my opinion of these Express places, I shall just avoid them even more in future, although that is sadly becoming more difficult.
Cockle
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Absolutely gobsmacked!
I think I've heard them all now!
Firstly, as PU suggested, a letter demanding compensation for this incident, followed by a phone call to your local tabloid newspaper, they love things like this!
The wife and I had a similar thing in a cafe in Cornwall years ago, nothing was said but the assistant obviously thought we were guilty of stealing a can of coke. A family in front of us waiting to pay were buying the shop out of sandwitches, pasties and coke when one of their number innocently took their can from the tray without the mother seeing. She then pointed out to the cashier that she was a can short and he put another one on her tray.
When it came to our turn, nothing was said and the transaction went through smoothly. However the dirty looks from said cashier was enough to prevent us from enjoying our meal. I could have put him right but I decided that his ignorence exceeded most of his other attributes and ignored the matter.
Hugo
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One things for certain,I would never be able to drive off in my artic after filling up with diesel,(500ltr tank) as we have to present our Key Fuels card first,before paying.This is to make sure the card has not been stolen,and to make sure the bill has been paid by our head office.
But as for the garage making the accusations,I agree with a previous post of contacting your local paper's editor and asking him if he would be interested in the story.
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...or do like they do in France where you pay as you leave in your car and a barrier prevents you leaving otherwise? No? Too much like common sense for GB :) (like putting a coin into the trolley to ensure it gets back to where it is supposed to)
The ASDA petrol station next to the Wolvs football ground has barriers at the pay point, and metal spikes preventing you from leaving by the entrance.
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You can call me anything you like Sir Borasport but there is a strong impression to the visitor that UK service standards of the one-on-one variety, to put it politely, frequently suck. And remember the attitude of the front-line staff more often than not reflects the way the management sees their job and the customer himself (dammit sorry, should have said "her"-self, still working on this PC thing).
The poster's experience here is appalling but I am not in the least surprised, for a service station minimum wage hire what are you going to get? Transient staff, maybe immigrants with poor English and no motivation, guys who never made it through high school. When your business is cost-driven rather than service-led, you have sown the seeds for what those flabby marketeers in their Armani suits like to call the "service experience" or, equally accurately, despite the ghastliness of the phrase, the "customer interface". Your staff will look after your customers in more or less the same way you look after them, because theior attitude reflects what it's like to work around here.
One thing I try hard to do when I encounter especially good service is to make a point of recognising it by means of simple thanks to the counter agent or whoever and a description of the behaviour that pleased me. Sometimes if I'm so sufficiently moved I might even drop a line to the GM with the employee's name.
How many of us bother to do that? It can come back to you too the next time you visit, you may just get that little bit of extra treatment.
We have an old Filipino saying which I commend to anyone involved with C/S attitude training and programme roll-out as the content for their first Power-Point overhead:
"You can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a barrel of vinegar".
That's a two-way street, customer or service provider.
...on the practical side, these places set themselves for failure with their petrol payment systems, so they can hardly be surprised if they experience a high proportion of runners. The answer is so simple I wonder what they're all whining about. Forecourt attendants or pre-pay. Just do it.
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"The answer is quite simple. Pre pay delivery. The fuel companies can afford it. Tradition is a wonderful thing but we must be practical."
The trouble is with targetting the victims and decent people instead of the criminal scum, is that you just up the anty, we have seen this over the last 30 years or so with all sorts of other crimes.... the problem is, more force and violence is usually the criminal's answer.
ie, you make the cars more secure, they steal the keys from your house while you sleep, they tell you to hide your keys, so you get threatened witha gun or knife at traffic lights, and of course, now a lot of people lock their car doors, and many new cars lock them when you set off... so they will eventually just shoot you dead through the window like they do in Kingston of Johannesberg. Where will it end?
With fuel, they could just ram some sharp object into your plastic fuel tank and drain it out....this scum has all day every day to plot and scheme, they don't work, they want what they see, and will do whatever it takes to get it. For example, all steel roller shutters do is cause ram raids.
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"...on the practical side, these places set themselves for failure with their petrol payment systems, so they can hardly be surprised if they experience a high proportion of runners. The answer is so simple I wonder what they're all whining about. Forecourt attendants or pre-pay. Just do it."
I wonder if the current payment system is maintained because the solutions suggested would reduce the traffic through the potentially much more profitable shop?
Where prepay is available, e.g. local Tesco forecourt, personally I use it every time. Though it can be irritating when the receipt fails to emerge and a trip into the shop past the display of King Size Twix bars is still necessary.
I do agree with many of Growler's comments above and previously, especially the recognition that the honey / vinegar issue really IS a two-way street.
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Always get a receipt.A long standing client (not a criminal/motorist !) was arrested a few years ago. The circumstances where that she was reported as having done a drive-off to the local Police. Her car was circulated and she was stopped and nicked. She had pre-paid but not got a receipt. The attendant had had a genuine drive off but passed my client's details in error. It was eventually proved that she hadn't nicked the fuel. The Police acted quite fairly and had bailed her pending further enquires when they could have charged. The Supermarket garage where negligent. The Police reacted quite furiously and refused to act on calls from this garage until all reports had been fully documeted and backed up with corroborated evidence.
We managed to secure a "substantial" settlement in the end. Lesson to me was always get a receipt, always pay by credit card. If she hadn't she would have ended up in Court and we would have taken it to Crown and consequently would have dragged out for months.
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I wonder if the current payment system is maintained because the solutions suggested would reduce the traffic through the potentially much more profitable shop?
Possibly for petrol stations, but not always for supermarket forecourts. A lot of Asdas have kiosks and barriers on the exit rather than a shop and in many ways this speeds things up. Queues tend to be dealt with quicker and as you pull away from the pump to pay the next customer can pull on and be getting ready sooner.
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>>And then you read FiF on motorway services, and you on petrol stations, and its all to easy to believe. In this country, the customer is always wrong unless they can prove otherwise.
Take Pugulgy's advice and stuff them at the highest level. Failing that, was it a 24 hr service station ? If not, a late night visit with a box of matches might make you feel better.....>>
On this topic raised a few posts up by Borasport, what Borasport? (are they really that fast??...), I had an unpleasant experience back in my Uni days at a very well known chain of petrol stations. It was a 24hr garage and obviously was operating a night till. A couple of my friends and I rolled up (on foot) to get some bread or something, at some early hour of the morning and we had admittedly had quite a bit to drink. We then, in our drunken state, thought it would be amusing to send him to the other side of the store a couple of times to fetch various items of confectionary (which we had every intention of paying for). He took offence to this and after a short argument (him accusing us of taking the mick - a fair cop but only a bit of harmless fun), he proceeded to come out of the shop and physically attack us. The evening ended with my mate in hospital for facial abrasions from the contact between the shop attendant's boot and the forecourt.
We called the police and they went round to the garage the next day to have a word. No charges were pressed in the end but we also wrote a strongly worded letter to the head office of this organisation and were reliably informed that the employee in question no longer worked for the company. Result. Always worth having a go I say.
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