Tesco petrol station wouldn't accept my credit card

BargainJunky

I also have a two year old son who is prone to tantrums and hates shopping so know exactly how you feel. If I had been you I would have left my trolley full of shopping (hopefully full of frozen food due to defrost) and gone to shop at Sainsbury's!

Keep smiling and would your little 'angel' like to play with my little 'angel'?

Pound

Petrol stations tend to treat the police like a debt collection agency. Police will get involved if someone fills up with no intention to pay as it's theft. If you fill up, intend to pay but for some reason can't, even if it's because of something like forgetting your wallet or you have no money in your account then the petrol station can only treat it as a debt and can only pursue it through civil courts.

I used to work in a petrol station. One time a guy filled up a newly stolen car. He came in and said he forgot his wallet and asked if he could come back later to pay, he probably had no intention of paying but thought asking for time to pay would mean we wouldn't phone the police and give them his location. He left and got reported because we don't give people time to pay. The police caught him a few months later and tried to charge him for the theft of the petrol, he said he'd asked for time to pay. The police asked if that was true, I confirmed, the police then told us it was then a civil matter.

Altarf

Pound wrote:

I used to work in a petrol station. One time a guy filled up a newly stolen car. He came in and said he forgot his wallet and asked if he could come back later to pay, he probably had no intention of paying but thought asking for time to pay would mean we wouldn't phone the police and give them his location. He left and got reported because we don't give people time to pay. The police caught him a few months later and tried to charge him for the theft of the petrol, he said he'd asked for time to pay. The police asked if that was true, I confirmed, the police then told us it was then a civil matter.

The policy of the company that you used to work for was flawed. You say that you didn't give people time to pay. As the crime is 'knowing that a service is done or goods supplied you dishonestly made off without having paid as required or expected and with intent to avoid payment' then if someone fills up and comes into the petrol station and tells you they have forgotten their wallet, you have to prove at that point in time that they dishonestly obtained the fuel with no intention to pay. Just not having any money is not enough.

As you cannot prove the person has commited a criminal offence the police are not going to be interested, and if you try to stop them leaving you could be arrested.

Which is why companies like Tesco get the person with no money to fill in a form saying that they will pay by a certain date. Then if they don't it can be passed to the police, as there is now evidence that they had no intent to pay. Failure to pay in these circumstances is not a 'civil matter' and can and has resulted in criminal convictions.

taxiphil

MyUserNamesTaken wrote:

Out of curiosity, Taxiphil, was this the card you'd used to pay for your Xbox? If so, I assume it's the card they also refunded to when you got your R&R? Sometimes, this can cause problems with Tesco's own system. I paid for a PS2 on my Mastercard, which they then refunded back to due to giving me an R&R. I needed a refund on something else and the system rejected my card.

Yes, it was the same card, but the petrol incident happened the day before the Xbox R+R. The staff in the petrol station told me that all HSBC Mastercards had been getting refused all day.

But needless to say the Xbox R+R was the perfect tonic after the petrol incident!

nomoneytoday wrote:

Sainsburys allowed my wife a week to pay her petrol bill when her card wouldn't work the other day...

Similar forms to be filled out were done at the side of the till, out of sight of the others in the queue

Its not the card decline that is the issue, its how the company deals with the problems that shows how good they are...

Absolutely. Now that's how it should be done.

Pound

Altarf wrote:

The policy of the company that you used to work for was flawed. You say that you didn't give people time to pay. As the crime is 'knowing that a service is done or goods supplied you dishonestly made off without having paid as required or expected and with intent to avoid payment' then if someone fills up and comes into the petrol station and tells you they have forgotten their wallet, you have to prove at that point in time that they dishonestly obtained the fuel with no intention to pay. Just not having any money is not enough.

As you cannot prove the person has commited a criminal offence the police are not going to be interested, and if you try to stop them leaving you could be arrested.

I do agree and I think it was a case of bad management, but in practice it probably helped reduced the company's losses. Most people don't know their rights and the threat of being reported to the police usually helped them find a friend or relative who could give us their credit card details. We never did anything like stop people leaving, just called the police.

A PC did once tell me they would be speaking to someone at the company to explain the civil/criminal thing but if they did management didn't take any notice.

tomstickland

Not wanting to spoil the fun, but why not carry a debit card round in case you need to withdraw cash?

lemmings999

what did happen is at 3:30 aprox streamline referalls went down so most retailers coundn't accept cards however most cash machines still could as they work a different system, no retailer was able to get manual authorisation either, then at 4:30 any purchase on a visa card under £300 was able to be manually autharised but you can imagine how hard it is to phone a compay with 95% of other shops doing the same thing, all systems were then fully resored at about 6:45

these things happen but the reason most stores dont have a backup is because streamline ( the referall company) say that if their automated service fails company's can phone for manual requests, the manual system has never failed in all the time it has been running till now so noone would have had a backup as they were told it was immpossible for the manual system to fail


in short, things happened, nothing can be done about it now, live with it

astonsmummy

Touchy!
This is what is good about this site, it gives people a chance to rant about things which have annoyed them and get other peoples perspective - but abrupt, sarcastic or even nasty comments are soo uncalled for.

lemontart

I had a prob with my abby debit card in tesoes on saturday..........very embarrasing fourtunately I had plenty of cash on me to cover it as I was on route to do banking.........turned out it was bank computer prob............not so much of a sorry for your embaressment though when I called them.

Beth
x