Increasing problem of 'Fill and Drive Off'

cardinalbiggles

Its the norm in the US to prepay. I have never seen it any other way across there.

It would be a sad state of affairs if this was brought into the UK, we are not the same as the USA and don't have the same problems with poverty and crime.

Oli.s

My local asda (Wakefield) has done away with the kiosks all together, you either pay at pump with your debit / credit card or buy your fuel elsewhere.

ballyblack

In South Africa its the old fashioned way a attendant/employee fill it for you and you pay him/her. I guess labour is cheaper!

At some stations no other way to pay

vikingaero

I imagine the queuw twice system would put off a lot of motorists in the UK. Especially of the faff of most petrol stations being full blown shops.

Even at prepay supermarket fuel stations - 90% of customers don't use pay at pump and still queue. I can remember the last time I had a face to face with a cashier and always pay at pump.

MothballsWallet

Oli.s wrote: »

My local asda (Wakefield) has done away with the kiosks all together, you either pay at pump with your debit / credit card or buy your fuel elsewhere.

The big Asda at Dyce in Aberdeen has done this as well.

There's a big car wash building where the kiosk and shop used to be.

mrcow

We've had this at a particular filling station in France too. We couldn't understand why the pump wouldn't dispense. It was because we had to hand over our cash prior to filling.

Ultrasonic

Morrisons pay at pump works like Tesco system described above - put card in at start, type in PIN, get payment up to £100 authorised, then deliver fuel and get charged for what you take. This is a faster system for me than queuing in the kiosk so I always use these pumps, unless I need to go into the kiosk to collect a Morrisons Miles voucher.

I can't see any downsides to this from a customer point of view. I can see from the garage's point of view it removes the chance of me going in to pay and then being overcome by an urge to purchase overpriced snacks to boost their profit margins, but as this never happens they aren't really missing out . The only thing that annoys me is when the automated pump runs out of paper to print receipts, and I'm then forced to queue up to get one. But at that point I'm no worse off than I would be with the old system.

I'm confused by the system discussed above that involves queuing twice? I've never come across anything like that.

Ultrasonic

mrcow wrote: »

We've had this at a particular filling station in France too. We couldn't understand why the pump wouldn't dispense. It was because we had to hand over our cash prior to filling.

I remember coming across this system in France something like 20 years ago. I don't know why it's taken so long for the same system to start to become more widespread here.

Guest101

ballyblack wrote: »

In South Africa its the old fashioned way a attendant/employee fill it for you and you pay him/her. I guess labour is cheaper!

At some stations no other way to pay

less fuel tax i think

[Deleted User]

I always use pay@pump where available. Some places people are too scared to use them e.g. Asda. Quite often there will be a queue at the normal pumps but not at the pay@pumps. Drive in, fill up, off I go.