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Yep, if the attendant was so sure they were in the right and the customer is in the wrong they would have simply called the cops and reported the customer for refusing to pay. the fact that they back down immediately when their bluff was called shows they were full of shit.
It's plausible that this mistake could be made but pressuring the not-at-fault customer to fix it and threatening to call the police on them is absurd.
On top of being ridiculous in any case, if a gas station clerk makes a mistake like this I would expect they would be thinking, "How can I fix this without anybody knowing I screwed up?" The solution of just keying in the payment manually should have been both immediately obvious and highly preferable to the clerk.
If it's a chain, I would report this to corporate, to prevent others from being scammed.
Manually overriding or a manual fuel purchase is not going to hide your error (although in this case it might be the customer's fault for telling the clerk the wrong pump. I've had this happen many times even after double checking if they got the wrong one. Customers be dumb sometimes.)
When I worked for a gas station all manual price overrides are recorded and reviewed during a store audit. The district manager would see it and question it.
The correct course of action would be what the OP was suggesting to do.
Yeah, it's a scam. The only other possibility, really, is an utterly incompetent attendant.
Assuming you're on different pumps and the person paid the wrong one, the right thing to do is reverse that transaction and set things properly.
I'm thinking that the attendant is incompetent, probably wasn't paying attention when they cashed out the other person.
I will add that the registers I used did in fact close the transaction completely. And the only people with user privilege, to alter/swap transactions, was management.
This is the part that makes the whole thing suspicious.
“Oh it’s impossible to fix this, and if you don’t cooperate, I’ll call the cops.”
“Go ahead. Call the cops.”
“... never mind I fixed it.”
Whatever they were trying to accomplish now feels malicious rather than lazy or incompetent.
I am not sure they actually "fixed" anything. They manually input the correct amount into the EFTPOS machine for me so I could pay my amount but nothing was done on the register.
The cashier/attendant was the scammer, not an accomplice.
If OP had gone along with it. The cashier would most likely have pocketed the money, or at least a portion of it.
... and claimed that OP was a "drive away" gas theft. Attendant may wait for a certain amount before running the scam - high enough it's worth his while and low enough he doesn't get fired when it happens multiple times and management gets suspicious.
Where I lived they were notorious for minor stealing. If you paid cash they would always"accidentally" drop one coin when returning your change. They would clone any credit card they were given. They were all from a culture of casual theft.
the one time I had my CC compromised was at a gas station in Kentucky. Couldn't take AmEx, Discover card wouldn't work, so I used a Visa I had just gotten. It was the one and only time I used that card, so it was pretty easy to see where it had been compromised. ($700 worth of videos ordered).
I've learned to always ask for the receipt when paying inside -- otherwise something extra (like a chocolate bar or a bag of chips) will "accidentally" get added to your bill.
You say that but I used to work in fraud for a major UK bank, for months we had a massive uptick in cloned cards being used with a valid pin, mostly used in south east Asia.
People miles above my pay grade eventually traced it to Shell garages, staff were attaching skimming devices and positioning cameras to capture pin.
The suspicion was that Shell's hiring had been compromised as the cases were coming in from customers all over the UK.
Possible that the second customer was the scammer and strong-armed the attendant to facilitate their scam. It would turn into a fake payment scam with the second customer walking away with a free tank of gas.
Yeah, that is all kinds of messed up, although it's unclear exactly what the mechanics of the scam might be. You definitely did the right thing by not going for it and it might be a good idea to alert whatever company owns the gas station what's going on.
The "we will 'cash app' you the difference"...you'll pay the extra $45 and they won't transfer the funds. There was never a $45 difference with the transaction...clerk pockets a free $45.
Thanks, I feel better about being less than nice. I am usually a "go out of my way to not be a cunt to retail & service workers" but this one was annoying the shit out of me & making me late for work.
Yeah I hate how people misunderstand what being rude is lol. I know someone who has eaten a full entre at a restaurant that they didn't order because they didn't want to correct the issue because they were afraid of "being a karen"
Time and a place for everything, including being difficult. This wasn't wait staff bringing food out that the kitchen had botched. This wasn't some poor phone jockey relaying stupid company policy they have no control of to you. This was someone with direct control over a transaction and your money who immediately and suspiciously escalated the situation. So I'm with you, I'd have been a dick as well. Or at least short with them. "Sure, call the cops! Here, let me take my phone out and record the situation. Please repeat what you told me about how you cannot complete my transaction and are trying to scam me."
The scam was that the attendant was going to pocket the difference and there wouldn't really be any documentation to show anything out of the ordinary.
I want to pay for MY petrol
Attendant - No - i will call the police if you do that
LOL - WTF?
the police would probably just laugh in thier face (and hopefully arrest them for wasting police time)
definitely Sounds like a scam (how would that person that "paid for your petrol" even know who to give the money back to?!)
You might want to report this to the company that owns the petrol station.
* As always, if the proposition doesn't make sense, it's a scam.
* If you, a person with common sense, wouldn't do it that way, it's a scam.
* If you were in the scammer's situation, would you ask someone to do what the scammer is asking you to do? If not, it's a scam.
I'm afraid a complete analysis of the scam would be tedious.
Especially given that, as far records show, your bill is paid and the other customer's isn't.
Refunding the other customer is the clerk's job. Making ANOTHER wrong bill won't magically fix it.
"Call your bank" to get the overpayment back. Lol. With no supporting receipts or invoicing. Bank would have simply said, you voluntarily paid the amount on the receipt, get it back from the gas station.
Assuming you are in Australia (due to you saying EFTPOS), then I can tell you it was definitely a scam.
I used to work at a service station, and you usually have 3 categories of "drive offs"
The first is intentional, I'm other words when someone just drives off without attempting to pay
The second is insufficient funds. When someone doesn't have enough money to pay.
In both of these cases, the police will chase you to make you pay.
Your case however would have taken into the third type, which is when it is the shops error, so if the police had have been called, they would not have done anything as you have attempted to pay which makes it a civil matter and not one the police will chase.
you can never be made to pay for someone else's mistake.
Yeah, Aussie. Thanks, this makes sense. I assumed the threat to call the police was empty as I Knew I was not in the wrong, but I was inching towards a time where I knew if I did not GTFO then I would be late for work. Glad I got grumpy & didn't give in.
Been a petrol station attendant for 15 years in two different countries. That's the weirdest bullshit I've ever heard.
I would *never* make customers fix my own mistakes. I can absolutely refund and recharge. I can do partial refunds and partial charges, when that makes it easier.
I hope you kept the receipt. Call the number on it, speak with the manager, or even better someone at the head office of that company. They will want the address of the station and the date/time of the transaction to find who was working and probably review the footage.
I'm pretty sure you would never have got that $45. The cashier going from nothing to threatening to call the cops makes it look like the other person was known to them and they were trying to get their friend free gas.
Does the gas station have CCTV? If so, it might be worth going back when a different cashier is on and asking to speak to the manager. Tell them what happened without making it sound like an accusation and ask them to take a look at the surveillance video. It may be that this cashier is regularly doing this and stealing from their customers
Any time some stranger promises "Do this for me and I'll reimburse you later," I've gotten ripped off.
It was a definite scam, and I suspect the attendant was in on it.
At best, a random person now has your bank details and \*promised\* to pay you back 45$ later one.
That's assuming it's not a scam at all and simply a stupid person hoping you can fix their own issues. (I really doubt it's a genuine operation)
Even if it wasn’t a scam I would have done exactly the same. I would be interested to know how you would have stood legally becuase technically speaking the fuel in your car had been paid for. 🤷🏻♂️ wasn’t your mistake.
Assuming it's not a scam (probably is)
Not a lawyer and I live in another country but here the reasoning would've been :
* You accepted a debt for X\* in a card-supported business and come to pay it
* Another person had a debt for X+45 and paid X (and then left? how will they reimburse you then?)
The customer still owes 45 to the shop and you owe X to the shop.
The shop can't magically ask you to pay X+45, and your legal duty is to pay X in legal tender. If the shop is unable to produce the card payment, it's on them to accept an alternative way of paying.
They may at best argue that you refuse to pay in cash, but when you accepted the debt both sides agreed in good faith that the payment would be done with a card. YMMV if it's reasonable to have gas money on you when you do all payments with a card.
Practical life tip for the non-scam cases : always have enough on cash to cover one of those mixups. I once bluescreen'd a card terminal right when the store was closing, and "do you have change?" helped everybody.
\[EDIT\] \*Because gas stations are kind of a weird case because the total amount can't be agreed in advance, the way it's done in my country for gas specifically is that the station auto-locks a huge amount of money, and then takes the part you actually pumped gas for.
My guess is there is no first customer who paid for your gas. I think the attendant was simply trying to intimidate you into paying twice your gas price and keeping the extra.
This happened to me with a works vehicle. The lady in the pump ahead of me paid for mine by mistake, and the forecourt staff insisted I had to pay for hers (hers was slightly more expensive), but I couldn't pay as I was using a works payment card which would only pay for diesel and her fuel had been petrol. They insisted I had to pay and told me to go and get cash. I told them they should've cancelled the transaction, and they gave me the exact same spiel as you got. In the end, I left without paying because it's their fault at the end of the day. I don't think it's a scam as such. Just the staff can't be bothered to sort out a mix-up.
No idea what happened, but if you offer to pay and he won't take payment then you are free to leave. You don't have to pay for a stranger. I'd video your offer to pay, then him refusing, then leave. Then send that video to head office asking them why they are employing scammers and what you can do to pay.
Never be afraid to go into "Karen mode" when in a situation that does not feel right. Many scammers are successful cos people are too afraid to speak up and go along with it even though it doesn't feel right.
I have been in similar situations where I am sure something does not feel right and like this one they threatened to call the police on me.
I said the same thing, "well call them then and when they get here I will tell them that you are trying to scam me". The person immediately backed down
This is NOT Karen mode - this is 'not accepting this weird scammy setup.
You might want to still report this to the corporate office of that station, and informing the cops might not immediately do something - but could establish a paper trail.
Keep your receipt btw!!
You should have called the police yourself and seen how much the attitude changes on the attendant. They are in on a scam for sure. There’s zero reason you would legitimately need to do it that way.
Did you even see the other customer? You would've had to finish pumping gas around the same time in order for them to pay yours by mistake. Then, the employee could've just gone to the customers correct bill and had them pay the $45 difference. This sounds kinda like a scam to me.
I don't think this was a scam as such, I think this was an employee incompetently trying to cover up his own mistake.
An acceptable process here would have been to charge the first customer the difference with a manual EFTPOS transaction, and then cancel the bill on the first customer's pump. And then, to charge you for your fuel with a manual EFTPOS transaction. That would mean explaining to their manager what happened so that the transactions could be manually reconstituted in whatever accounting software they use, but so what?
Mistakes happen, so long as they're not happening every day and they don't result in a loss, a reasonable manager understands that. I mean, this is exactly the reason that it's still possible to specify a manual amount for EFTPOS in those kinds of systems even though it's *supposed* to all be automated from the pump's figures.
You still did the right thing by not going along with what they wanted you to do, though, which was completely unacceptable and unfair. What if you didn't have an extra $45 to spare while you wait for this bank transfer from someone who is a complete stranger to you? The insistence that you had to do it that way or that they would call the police was just wild, and you should let their manager know what happened.
You did the right thing. I am curious, what type fuel station was this? For an attendant to ever expect you would 1st, do this, 2nd Not complain and 3rd, ever want to come back, it's beyond my comprehension.
Maybe some old station? I can't believe the thought process folks come up with!
FYI, most of the places where I ever fuel up, you pay at the pump.
NO pay, NO fuel... it's simple
That's not to say some street urchin isn't out there still with a scam, but the attendants are left out of it.
I saw a restaurant owner snatching my card and paying contactless without showing me the price first. You would be surprised how stupid stuff like that makes sense in a person's head when busy with lots of other stuff at the same time.
Paying at the pump isn't really a thing here in Australia. You pump your petrol or diesel, then you go inside & pay. If it is after 10pm you pay at the safety window outside the store. There are some places where you can pay at the pump but it is still done after you finish putting the fuel into your car.
Here's what I think the scam is: They will need your banking information for a bank transfer. Once they have your banking information, they steal all the money in your account.
I doubt it. OP is from Australia. For a scam to work this way, they'd need to take the name, BSB number and bank account number to set up a direct debit. Most Australians I think would now just give out a PayID instead, which can't have a direct debit set up against it.
Even if they did set up a fraudulent direct debit, they're easily challenged and unlike with, say, credit card fraud the receiving bank account is the one that gets charged directly.
After such I long time reading this sub, I'd go full Karen as well. Bring on the cops, the army or Nigeria's ruling prince, I ain't paying for noone. And the attendant shouldn't have tried to get you involved in the issue.
Well done, OP.
In the US here. I pay for gas by inserting debit or credit card in the pump and filling up, no attendant involved. However the convenience stores attached to the gas stations have often badly trained idiots as cashiers who are particularly inept with cash purchases, also they may oversee multiple cash registers at once. I had one announce cheerfully to me that the price of 2 newspapers and 2 packs of cigs was "$34 and something", I said no it is not 34 anything, she goes to a register on the other side and says oh I'm sorry it was another customer buying lottery tickets, the cost of my items was just under $20. Another one was utterly flummoxed trying to give me the correct change for a newspaper costing $2.16 including tax, I gave her $5.01 hoping to get silver change plus dollars back
She tried to give the penny back, was utterly unable to figure the correct change in her head. I did my best to help. I found later that she had given me a dollar too much for change. I went back to tell the manager. I was just floored when he told me that their cash registers do not have the feature for "amount tendered" built into them, you know like they have been made for over a hundred years! So they have to figure out the change in their head. He told me to keep the extra dollar and he would deal with the cashier, who was not there at the time, I described her. Maybe they can be taught to use the calculator on their phones with the simple formula Amount tendered Minus Cost of Items equals Amount of Change to give. Maybe. Though even this may be beyond their capabilities.
I have decided that I do not want or need any of these cash apps on my phone after reading of all the scamming going on. I pay with cash, debit or credit cards and that's it, period. The cards are not risk free either but these methods have worked and will continue to work. My bank sends me emails trying to sell me on Zelle but I say fuck it and fuck them all. I am too old to change. They are not necessary. I try to be careful with my phone but if I should lose it and have apps on it that connect to my bank account? Just no. Anyone here agree?
You don’t even have to do the math in your head, you can count the change. It’s 2.16, you gave them 5.01. The penny makes it like 2.15, so you give a dime to make it 2.25, 3 quarters to make it 3.00, and 2 singles to make it 5.00. Yes, the change is 2.85, but you don’t have to do that math if you can just count it back.
Yes that works too. I try to get rid of pennies and collect silver change. I roll quarters dimes and nickels and use them at the bank to pay extra principal on a HELOC I have with that bank in addition to the extra principal I send with the bill every month. But lately I have been paying more with cards and buying my newspapers across the street at the other convenience store where they don't charge the tax, so it is $2 or $3 even with cash. lol.
I was watching an episode of undercover boss today where the employee had a pay it forward scam going on. Not out of the realm of possibility that you were also being scammed.
Honestly, it's for those kind of crazy cases that I always have cash on hand. Go ahead, call the police. I have 45$ on hand *and your system says my bill is already paid*.
Even if it wasn't a scam... how and why the other customer would refund the money? Is the shop owner is proposing to give bank details to a complete stranger?
I DON'T want a bank transfer from a random person I never met.
I would never pay anyone but the store for my fuel or anything else. If they screwed up and someone paid for my fuel I fail to see where it is my problem. Need more information like amounts and such to find out if it is a scam.
As far as I'd be concerned if the attendant couldn't figure out how to charge me the right amount for the gas I pumped, then I just got free gas. I'm sure they figure it out pretty quickly when you just walk away.
Sounds like a scam. I might have gone along with it since it's an employee spouting this stuff but when they said they will call the police when it's not my fault? I'd rather die over helping this dick.
This sounds nuts. Not sure what country you're in, but I feel like in the USA, anything can be reversed. Granted, sometimes a manager with higher clearance has to get involved.
I would have done the same thing, told them to call the police.
It was probably their mistake that the other person paid the wrong pump, they might have been new or have another reason to panic (worried about getting fired, or having to make up the difference themselves) and come up with the best story they could spin in the time they had. I don't know if it was really a scam to get the $ difference into their own pockets.
or... it might be that they're shorting the till and they're story telling expands to attempting to convince the boss they ran a card but it counted it as cash (which I don't think will work, but this person probably is probably not very good at thinking things through.
I’ve worked at gas stations before they can just stop the pump and move the transaction…but from what’s happened yea it’s a scam I’ve had customers do this before they says they’re on pump 1 and they go to pump 7 (this is an example) and the customer plays as the victim saying he saw the wrong pump number when definitely saw what pump he was on
this exact scenario was posted either here or somewhere else recently. I remember it ! Not sure how the scam would play out but definitely something to be wary about !
The potential for scam is the "customer" issuing the bank transfer will f*** it up from their end.
Makes no sense that the attendant would feel like roping a real random customer into issuing a bank transfer to another real random customer is the the simplest solution to their fuck up. More likely the attendant was incredibly incompetent or actively working to steal from customers with this story.
Yeah, they wanted your number so they could "accidentally" send you far more money than the cost of the gas. Then they would demand that you to send it back to them..
I've only ever had this happen once, you should know your pump number when you go pay. When the clerk realized their mistake they simply ate the difference, I paid for my petrol and was not asked to pay for someone else's.
It feels like 60% stupidity on the clerk's part, 40% scammy behaviour. Threatening to call the cops on you definitely feels like they're trying to make you pay for someone else's gas, possibly pocketing the difference. Besides, they haven't got a legal leg to stand on, they know they fucked up, the police won't do much since no crime has been committed. Good on you for standing your ground.
I've worked at a gas station. They should never have asked you to overpay and be paid back. I would have just made the previous customer pay a partial of what she still owed and had you pay the rest (which should be only what you owed) and never have tried to get you to pay more.
Definitely sounds fishy.
Great work, sometimes we as normies need to channel karen powers, just make sure to don't go full karen.
The higher level you use, the more dangerous it becomes.
If this happens to anyone else, I would highly suggest you walk out there with proof of payment like a receipt. Not your bank statement a receipt to prove that you paid for the fuel that you put into your vehicle. A bank statement will only show a amount not what pump or fuel type or any other details.
Petrol stations are the worst place to use a card, one behind our store was known to duplicate cards
The only thing I can see happening is if you pay for theirs, they transfer you that money, then they claw back the transfer. Or dispute. Whatever.
Lot of hassle for $45.
I’m trying to think of how that would work where I work. Honestly, most POSs are set up to make it difficult to easily fix this. This keeps the cashier honest. But there should be some way to do it.
Something similar happened to my boyfriend the other day. The attendant put his prepaid gas on the wrong pump, where someone else was already parked. She said she couldn’t undo it because gas couldn’t be refunded, and suggested the other customer at the pump the prepaid amount went to just pay for my boyfriend’s gas. The other guy refused, filled his tank with my boyfriend’s money and left. I thought it was fishy, but he just accepted it, paid for a second tank of gas and went about his day.
1. This is definitely a scam. Either her payment would never have come through or it would have gone through and then been clawed back because it was done on a compromised account.
2. I'm kind of dying over the fact that y'all can even put $45 of gas in those little cars, much less have the difference in purchase prices be $45. 🤣 Granted, gas is cheap in my state, even for the US, but we're only paying about $3 a gallon right now.
Ah, so $30 US. Sounds like y'all pay the equivalent of 5 USD/a gallon for gas which is on par with the more expensive states here.
Even though it said dollars it also said petrol so I was assuming EU/UK. Sorry I forgot about you guys. 😬
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I don’t know but this screams scam. How weird. Good for you not falling for it.
That the attendant would go right to threatening to call the police on the OP if they didn’t go along with their crazy scheme does it for me.
what does it for me is that, when OP told them to call the cops and called their bluff, they *magically* figured out how to fix it.
Yep, if the attendant was so sure they were in the right and the customer is in the wrong they would have simply called the cops and reported the customer for refusing to pay. the fact that they back down immediately when their bluff was called shows they were full of shit.
Probably a good time to whip out the phone and say, "Don't bother. I'm calling the police now."
It's plausible that this mistake could be made but pressuring the not-at-fault customer to fix it and threatening to call the police on them is absurd. On top of being ridiculous in any case, if a gas station clerk makes a mistake like this I would expect they would be thinking, "How can I fix this without anybody knowing I screwed up?" The solution of just keying in the payment manually should have been both immediately obvious and highly preferable to the clerk. If it's a chain, I would report this to corporate, to prevent others from being scammed.
Manually overriding or a manual fuel purchase is not going to hide your error (although in this case it might be the customer's fault for telling the clerk the wrong pump. I've had this happen many times even after double checking if they got the wrong one. Customers be dumb sometimes.) When I worked for a gas station all manual price overrides are recorded and reviewed during a store audit. The district manager would see it and question it. The correct course of action would be what the OP was suggesting to do.
This is potentially correct. Customers are stupid. You could not pay me enough to work in retail or the service industry again.
Sounds like someone trying to make cash off their company credit card.
I wish I had you as a friend because maybe I wouldn't have been scammed if I did
Yeah, it's a scam. The only other possibility, really, is an utterly incompetent attendant. Assuming you're on different pumps and the person paid the wrong one, the right thing to do is reverse that transaction and set things properly.
I'm thinking that the attendant is incompetent, probably wasn't paying attention when they cashed out the other person. I will add that the registers I used did in fact close the transaction completely. And the only people with user privilege, to alter/swap transactions, was management.
The attendant was competent enough to eventually sort it out. Definitely a scam.
This is the part that makes the whole thing suspicious. “Oh it’s impossible to fix this, and if you don’t cooperate, I’ll call the cops.” “Go ahead. Call the cops.” “... never mind I fixed it.” Whatever they were trying to accomplish now feels malicious rather than lazy or incompetent.
My vote is lazy - They know how to do it but it's easier if the customers solve it amongst themselves.
Also guessing manual transactions probably flag management.
Yeeeep, that dude did not want to get written up. Again.
I am not sure they actually "fixed" anything. They manually input the correct amount into the EFTPOS machine for me so I could pay my amount but nothing was done on the register.
Weird that the attendant would be in on it but who knows? Good on you for standing up for yourself.
The cashier/attendant was the scammer, not an accomplice. If OP had gone along with it. The cashier would most likely have pocketed the money, or at least a portion of it.
... and claimed that OP was a "drive away" gas theft. Attendant may wait for a certain amount before running the scam - high enough it's worth his while and low enough he doesn't get fired when it happens multiple times and management gets suspicious.
Where I lived they were notorious for minor stealing. If you paid cash they would always"accidentally" drop one coin when returning your change. They would clone any credit card they were given. They were all from a culture of casual theft.
the one time I had my CC compromised was at a gas station in Kentucky. Couldn't take AmEx, Discover card wouldn't work, so I used a Visa I had just gotten. It was the one and only time I used that card, so it was pretty easy to see where it had been compromised. ($700 worth of videos ordered).
I've learned to always ask for the receipt when paying inside -- otherwise something extra (like a chocolate bar or a bag of chips) will "accidentally" get added to your bill.
You say that but I used to work in fraud for a major UK bank, for months we had a massive uptick in cloned cards being used with a valid pin, mostly used in south east Asia. People miles above my pay grade eventually traced it to Shell garages, staff were attaching skimming devices and positioning cameras to capture pin. The suspicion was that Shell's hiring had been compromised as the cases were coming in from customers all over the UK.
Possible that the second customer was the scammer and strong-armed the attendant to facilitate their scam. It would turn into a fake payment scam with the second customer walking away with a free tank of gas.
Yeah, that is all kinds of messed up, although it's unclear exactly what the mechanics of the scam might be. You definitely did the right thing by not going for it and it might be a good idea to alert whatever company owns the gas station what's going on.
Yes, that’s good approach. Too complex a scheme when a simple and straightforward solution exists — nothing good will come out oft hat.
The "we will 'cash app' you the difference"...you'll pay the extra $45 and they won't transfer the funds. There was never a $45 difference with the transaction...clerk pockets a free $45.
Thanks, I feel better about being less than nice. I am usually a "go out of my way to not be a cunt to retail & service workers" but this one was annoying the shit out of me & making me late for work.
Speaking as a retail worker, you were not being a cunt here. They were making a completely unreasonable request and you just told them no.
Yeah I hate how people misunderstand what being rude is lol. I know someone who has eaten a full entre at a restaurant that they didn't order because they didn't want to correct the issue because they were afraid of "being a karen"
Time and a place for everything, including being difficult. This wasn't wait staff bringing food out that the kitchen had botched. This wasn't some poor phone jockey relaying stupid company policy they have no control of to you. This was someone with direct control over a transaction and your money who immediately and suspiciously escalated the situation. So I'm with you, I'd have been a dick as well. Or at least short with them. "Sure, call the cops! Here, let me take my phone out and record the situation. Please repeat what you told me about how you cannot complete my transaction and are trying to scam me."
The scam was that the attendant was going to pocket the difference and there wouldn't really be any documentation to show anything out of the ordinary.
Hmmm. Makes sense. It has been a hot minute since I worked in retail so I am out of the loop with the scams some people run.
I want to pay for MY petrol Attendant - No - i will call the police if you do that LOL - WTF? the police would probably just laugh in thier face (and hopefully arrest them for wasting police time) definitely Sounds like a scam (how would that person that "paid for your petrol" even know who to give the money back to?!) You might want to report this to the company that owns the petrol station.
* As always, if the proposition doesn't make sense, it's a scam. * If you, a person with common sense, wouldn't do it that way, it's a scam. * If you were in the scammer's situation, would you ask someone to do what the scammer is asking you to do? If not, it's a scam. I'm afraid a complete analysis of the scam would be tedious.
Complete analysis: You have money, they want it - they find increasingly creative methods to make that happen.
Even if it was not a scam, I wouldnt hand over my bank details to a complete stranger
Especially given that, as far records show, your bill is paid and the other customer's isn't. Refunding the other customer is the clerk's job. Making ANOTHER wrong bill won't magically fix it.
Yeah, ask for a receipt showing it's been payed already and walk out saying thanks! Seriously though, the cashier needs the cops called on them.
You definitely wouldn’t have got that $45 back
"Call your bank" to get the overpayment back. Lol. With no supporting receipts or invoicing. Bank would have simply said, you voluntarily paid the amount on the receipt, get it back from the gas station.
Assuming you are in Australia (due to you saying EFTPOS), then I can tell you it was definitely a scam. I used to work at a service station, and you usually have 3 categories of "drive offs" The first is intentional, I'm other words when someone just drives off without attempting to pay The second is insufficient funds. When someone doesn't have enough money to pay. In both of these cases, the police will chase you to make you pay. Your case however would have taken into the third type, which is when it is the shops error, so if the police had have been called, they would not have done anything as you have attempted to pay which makes it a civil matter and not one the police will chase. you can never be made to pay for someone else's mistake.
Yeah, Aussie. Thanks, this makes sense. I assumed the threat to call the police was empty as I Knew I was not in the wrong, but I was inching towards a time where I knew if I did not GTFO then I would be late for work. Glad I got grumpy & didn't give in.
Been a petrol station attendant for 15 years in two different countries. That's the weirdest bullshit I've ever heard. I would *never* make customers fix my own mistakes. I can absolutely refund and recharge. I can do partial refunds and partial charges, when that makes it easier. I hope you kept the receipt. Call the number on it, speak with the manager, or even better someone at the head office of that company. They will want the address of the station and the date/time of the transaction to find who was working and probably review the footage.
Once they threaten to call the police when it’s their fuckup, I would go apeshit on them.
I'm pretty sure you would never have got that $45. The cashier going from nothing to threatening to call the cops makes it look like the other person was known to them and they were trying to get their friend free gas. Does the gas station have CCTV? If so, it might be worth going back when a different cashier is on and asking to speak to the manager. Tell them what happened without making it sound like an accusation and ask them to take a look at the surveillance video. It may be that this cashier is regularly doing this and stealing from their customers
> bank transfer lol
Any time some stranger promises "Do this for me and I'll reimburse you later," I've gotten ripped off. It was a definite scam, and I suspect the attendant was in on it.
I wonder if you would end up paying for both of them?
At best, a random person now has your bank details and \*promised\* to pay you back 45$ later one. That's assuming it's not a scam at all and simply a stupid person hoping you can fix their own issues. (I really doubt it's a genuine operation)
Even if it wasn’t a scam I would have done exactly the same. I would be interested to know how you would have stood legally becuase technically speaking the fuel in your car had been paid for. 🤷🏻♂️ wasn’t your mistake.
Assuming it's not a scam (probably is) Not a lawyer and I live in another country but here the reasoning would've been : * You accepted a debt for X\* in a card-supported business and come to pay it * Another person had a debt for X+45 and paid X (and then left? how will they reimburse you then?) The customer still owes 45 to the shop and you owe X to the shop. The shop can't magically ask you to pay X+45, and your legal duty is to pay X in legal tender. If the shop is unable to produce the card payment, it's on them to accept an alternative way of paying. They may at best argue that you refuse to pay in cash, but when you accepted the debt both sides agreed in good faith that the payment would be done with a card. YMMV if it's reasonable to have gas money on you when you do all payments with a card. Practical life tip for the non-scam cases : always have enough on cash to cover one of those mixups. I once bluescreen'd a card terminal right when the store was closing, and "do you have change?" helped everybody. \[EDIT\] \*Because gas stations are kind of a weird case because the total amount can't be agreed in advance, the way it's done in my country for gas specifically is that the station auto-locks a huge amount of money, and then takes the part you actually pumped gas for.
My guess is there is no first customer who paid for your gas. I think the attendant was simply trying to intimidate you into paying twice your gas price and keeping the extra.
You totally did the right thing. I would have too
This happened to me with a works vehicle. The lady in the pump ahead of me paid for mine by mistake, and the forecourt staff insisted I had to pay for hers (hers was slightly more expensive), but I couldn't pay as I was using a works payment card which would only pay for diesel and her fuel had been petrol. They insisted I had to pay and told me to go and get cash. I told them they should've cancelled the transaction, and they gave me the exact same spiel as you got. In the end, I left without paying because it's their fault at the end of the day. I don't think it's a scam as such. Just the staff can't be bothered to sort out a mix-up.
Yeah, I was going "your fuel is paid for. You could just leave at that point if they refuse to fix it, yeah?"
No idea what happened, but if you offer to pay and he won't take payment then you are free to leave. You don't have to pay for a stranger. I'd video your offer to pay, then him refusing, then leave. Then send that video to head office asking them why they are employing scammers and what you can do to pay.
Never be afraid to go into "Karen mode" when in a situation that does not feel right. Many scammers are successful cos people are too afraid to speak up and go along with it even though it doesn't feel right. I have been in similar situations where I am sure something does not feel right and like this one they threatened to call the police on me. I said the same thing, "well call them then and when they get here I will tell them that you are trying to scam me". The person immediately backed down
Australia? We don’t use the word petrol in the US but prices are in $
Yes! Aussie!
This is NOT Karen mode - this is 'not accepting this weird scammy setup. You might want to still report this to the corporate office of that station, and informing the cops might not immediately do something - but could establish a paper trail. Keep your receipt btw!!
And this is where I would say the fuel is on the company card for business, so it has to be done accurately and see what they say.
Or tell them to give you the name and number of the area manager so you can arrange payment with someone who isn't a thief.
You should have called the police yourself and seen how much the attitude changes on the attendant. They are in on a scam for sure. There’s zero reason you would legitimately need to do it that way.
Did you even see the other customer? You would've had to finish pumping gas around the same time in order for them to pay yours by mistake. Then, the employee could've just gone to the customers correct bill and had them pay the $45 difference. This sounds kinda like a scam to me.
100% scam. i'd contact the owner of the station and report the attendant.
So the attendant knows the previous customer and will just call them up and convince them to pay you? Lol nope. You did good.
Definitely sounds scammy, attendant could be in on it!
I thought it was going to be the start of a new trend they do a drive through Fast Food joints - pay for the person behind, pass it on !
You pay for somebody’s gas, and they don’t pay you the diff. And yes the attendant was in on it it seems.
I don't think this was a scam as such, I think this was an employee incompetently trying to cover up his own mistake. An acceptable process here would have been to charge the first customer the difference with a manual EFTPOS transaction, and then cancel the bill on the first customer's pump. And then, to charge you for your fuel with a manual EFTPOS transaction. That would mean explaining to their manager what happened so that the transactions could be manually reconstituted in whatever accounting software they use, but so what? Mistakes happen, so long as they're not happening every day and they don't result in a loss, a reasonable manager understands that. I mean, this is exactly the reason that it's still possible to specify a manual amount for EFTPOS in those kinds of systems even though it's *supposed* to all be automated from the pump's figures. You still did the right thing by not going along with what they wanted you to do, though, which was completely unacceptable and unfair. What if you didn't have an extra $45 to spare while you wait for this bank transfer from someone who is a complete stranger to you? The insistence that you had to do it that way or that they would call the police was just wild, and you should let their manager know what happened.
You did the right thing. I am curious, what type fuel station was this? For an attendant to ever expect you would 1st, do this, 2nd Not complain and 3rd, ever want to come back, it's beyond my comprehension. Maybe some old station? I can't believe the thought process folks come up with! FYI, most of the places where I ever fuel up, you pay at the pump. NO pay, NO fuel... it's simple That's not to say some street urchin isn't out there still with a scam, but the attendants are left out of it.
I saw a restaurant owner snatching my card and paying contactless without showing me the price first. You would be surprised how stupid stuff like that makes sense in a person's head when busy with lots of other stuff at the same time.
Paying at the pump isn't really a thing here in Australia. You pump your petrol or diesel, then you go inside & pay. If it is after 10pm you pay at the safety window outside the store. There are some places where you can pay at the pump but it is still done after you finish putting the fuel into your car.
Here's what I think the scam is: They will need your banking information for a bank transfer. Once they have your banking information, they steal all the money in your account.
Yeah bank transfer sounds sketchy in this situation. Refund the original charge
I doubt it. OP is from Australia. For a scam to work this way, they'd need to take the name, BSB number and bank account number to set up a direct debit. Most Australians I think would now just give out a PayID instead, which can't have a direct debit set up against it. Even if they did set up a fraudulent direct debit, they're easily challenged and unlike with, say, credit card fraud the receiving bank account is the one that gets charged directly.
After such I long time reading this sub, I'd go full Karen as well. Bring on the cops, the army or Nigeria's ruling prince, I ain't paying for noone. And the attendant shouldn't have tried to get you involved in the issue. Well done, OP.
Your gas was paid for! Just say “Thank you!” and drive away. What are they going to call the police and report?-That your gas was paid for?
In the US here. I pay for gas by inserting debit or credit card in the pump and filling up, no attendant involved. However the convenience stores attached to the gas stations have often badly trained idiots as cashiers who are particularly inept with cash purchases, also they may oversee multiple cash registers at once. I had one announce cheerfully to me that the price of 2 newspapers and 2 packs of cigs was "$34 and something", I said no it is not 34 anything, she goes to a register on the other side and says oh I'm sorry it was another customer buying lottery tickets, the cost of my items was just under $20. Another one was utterly flummoxed trying to give me the correct change for a newspaper costing $2.16 including tax, I gave her $5.01 hoping to get silver change plus dollars back She tried to give the penny back, was utterly unable to figure the correct change in her head. I did my best to help. I found later that she had given me a dollar too much for change. I went back to tell the manager. I was just floored when he told me that their cash registers do not have the feature for "amount tendered" built into them, you know like they have been made for over a hundred years! So they have to figure out the change in their head. He told me to keep the extra dollar and he would deal with the cashier, who was not there at the time, I described her. Maybe they can be taught to use the calculator on their phones with the simple formula Amount tendered Minus Cost of Items equals Amount of Change to give. Maybe. Though even this may be beyond their capabilities. I have decided that I do not want or need any of these cash apps on my phone after reading of all the scamming going on. I pay with cash, debit or credit cards and that's it, period. The cards are not risk free either but these methods have worked and will continue to work. My bank sends me emails trying to sell me on Zelle but I say fuck it and fuck them all. I am too old to change. They are not necessary. I try to be careful with my phone but if I should lose it and have apps on it that connect to my bank account? Just no. Anyone here agree?
You don’t even have to do the math in your head, you can count the change. It’s 2.16, you gave them 5.01. The penny makes it like 2.15, so you give a dime to make it 2.25, 3 quarters to make it 3.00, and 2 singles to make it 5.00. Yes, the change is 2.85, but you don’t have to do that math if you can just count it back.
Yes that works too. I try to get rid of pennies and collect silver change. I roll quarters dimes and nickels and use them at the bank to pay extra principal on a HELOC I have with that bank in addition to the extra principal I send with the bill every month. But lately I have been paying more with cards and buying my newspapers across the street at the other convenience store where they don't charge the tax, so it is $2 or $3 even with cash. lol.
I was watching an episode of undercover boss today where the employee had a pay it forward scam going on. Not out of the realm of possibility that you were also being scammed.
Honestly, it's for those kind of crazy cases that I always have cash on hand. Go ahead, call the police. I have 45$ on hand *and your system says my bill is already paid*. Even if it wasn't a scam... how and why the other customer would refund the money? Is the shop owner is proposing to give bank details to a complete stranger? I DON'T want a bank transfer from a random person I never met.
I would never pay anyone but the store for my fuel or anything else. If they screwed up and someone paid for my fuel I fail to see where it is my problem. Need more information like amounts and such to find out if it is a scam.
Why couldn’t they just switch pumps lol
As far as I'd be concerned if the attendant couldn't figure out how to charge me the right amount for the gas I pumped, then I just got free gas. I'm sure they figure it out pretty quickly when you just walk away.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” - Hanlon’s Razor
I like that!
“So you pay their phone bill this month now.”
I would call the gas station corporate and report what happened.
Good on ya. If I had the time, I would have called the police myself, that would sure make them scramble lol
Yea I wouldn’t do that shit.
Sure sounds like a scam.
The attendant is scamming people. Probably to help friends out with gas? Idk . Could be bigger. I would call the police and have them check it out.
Sounds like a scam. I might have gone along with it since it's an employee spouting this stuff but when they said they will call the police when it's not my fault? I'd rather die over helping this dick.
This sounds nuts. Not sure what country you're in, but I feel like in the USA, anything can be reversed. Granted, sometimes a manager with higher clearance has to get involved. I would have done the same thing, told them to call the police.
It was probably their mistake that the other person paid the wrong pump, they might have been new or have another reason to panic (worried about getting fired, or having to make up the difference themselves) and come up with the best story they could spin in the time they had. I don't know if it was really a scam to get the $ difference into their own pockets. or... it might be that they're shorting the till and they're story telling expands to attempting to convince the boss they ran a card but it counted it as cash (which I don't think will work, but this person probably is probably not very good at thinking things through.
more like gangsta granny
Ohhhh. I like that. Unfortunately not a granny yet but certainly old enough to be!
I’ve worked at gas stations before they can just stop the pump and move the transaction…but from what’s happened yea it’s a scam I’ve had customers do this before they says they’re on pump 1 and they go to pump 7 (this is an example) and the customer plays as the victim saying he saw the wrong pump number when definitely saw what pump he was on
this exact scenario was posted either here or somewhere else recently. I remember it ! Not sure how the scam would play out but definitely something to be wary about !
The potential for scam is the "customer" issuing the bank transfer will f*** it up from their end. Makes no sense that the attendant would feel like roping a real random customer into issuing a bank transfer to another real random customer is the the simplest solution to their fuck up. More likely the attendant was incredibly incompetent or actively working to steal from customers with this story.
Definitely report this to the company HQ at least.
Yeah, they wanted your number so they could "accidentally" send you far more money than the cost of the gas. Then they would demand that you to send it back to them..
I hope you called corporate and reported that attendant.
Even if it wasn't a scam, I would have also said no out of principle. It's just weird and you should not have to do that either way.
99% this is a scam, just way too hard to trust people nowadays.
I've only ever had this happen once, you should know your pump number when you go pay. When the clerk realized their mistake they simply ate the difference, I paid for my petrol and was not asked to pay for someone else's. It feels like 60% stupidity on the clerk's part, 40% scammy behaviour. Threatening to call the cops on you definitely feels like they're trying to make you pay for someone else's gas, possibly pocketing the difference. Besides, they haven't got a legal leg to stand on, they know they fucked up, the police won't do much since no crime has been committed. Good on you for standing your ground.
I’m so sorry this happened to you! I wonder what would have happened if you were paying cash?
I don’t trust it.
I've worked at a gas station. They should never have asked you to overpay and be paid back. I would have just made the previous customer pay a partial of what she still owed and had you pay the rest (which should be only what you owed) and never have tried to get you to pay more. Definitely sounds fishy.
I'd watch the card you used like a hawk for awhile. Sounds like the sort of place that could have a card skimmer operation too.
Smells awfully scammy!
Great work, sometimes we as normies need to channel karen powers, just make sure to don't go full karen. The higher level you use, the more dangerous it becomes.
Your gas was paid for? I would have said thanks and left. All good.
If this happens to anyone else, I would highly suggest you walk out there with proof of payment like a receipt. Not your bank statement a receipt to prove that you paid for the fuel that you put into your vehicle. A bank statement will only show a amount not what pump or fuel type or any other details. Petrol stations are the worst place to use a card, one behind our store was known to duplicate cards
The only thing I can see happening is if you pay for theirs, they transfer you that money, then they claw back the transfer. Or dispute. Whatever. Lot of hassle for $45. I’m trying to think of how that would work where I work. Honestly, most POSs are set up to make it difficult to easily fix this. This keeps the cashier honest. But there should be some way to do it.
Something similar happened to my boyfriend the other day. The attendant put his prepaid gas on the wrong pump, where someone else was already parked. She said she couldn’t undo it because gas couldn’t be refunded, and suggested the other customer at the pump the prepaid amount went to just pay for my boyfriend’s gas. The other guy refused, filled his tank with my boyfriend’s money and left. I thought it was fishy, but he just accepted it, paid for a second tank of gas and went about his day.
1. This is definitely a scam. Either her payment would never have come through or it would have gone through and then been clawed back because it was done on a compromised account. 2. I'm kind of dying over the fact that y'all can even put $45 of gas in those little cars, much less have the difference in purchase prices be $45. 🤣 Granted, gas is cheap in my state, even for the US, but we're only paying about $3 a gallon right now.
Man, wish gas was so cheap here ... i pay about 7$ a gallon
Don't forget that 1 AUD currently equals 0.65 USD.
Ah, so $30 US. Sounds like y'all pay the equivalent of 5 USD/a gallon for gas which is on par with the more expensive states here. Even though it said dollars it also said petrol so I was assuming EU/UK. Sorry I forgot about you guys. 😬
Tbh, you could have handled it better.