Being under charged

BECARARA

My mum bought petrol 8 months ago in a garage where she lives, she goes there twice a month.  Yesterday the cashier told her that 8 months ago he made a mistake and undercharged her and now she has to pay the £26 and was very rude and demanded she pay.  She paid as they que was building and she wanted just to get out of there.  Can they do this 8 months later! Where's the proof they can't just go on a receipt that they have and she doesn't. Surely they need physical evidence how do they know if was her and not a different customer!

JJ_Egan

Presume this is from the car registration number .

user1977

If she underpaid then she owed the money (and would have done for six years assuming we're in England or Wales). No, they don't need physical evidence - ultimately a court would decide on the balance of probabilities, which can be witnesses etc. But they wouldn't have chased it up much further for £26. Depends whether she wanted to use the garage again!

Ergates

On the one hand, if the shoe was on the other foot, and you discovered you'd been overcharged 8 months ago I'm pretty sure you'd want to be able to pursue it.   On the other hand I'd be wanting them to provide evidence to back up their claim - someone just randomly saying "We made a mistake 8 months ago and you owe use £26, can we have it now please" wouldn't cut it.  Especially not if they were rude about it (though, obviously, "rude" is open to interpretation).

TELLIT01

I would certainly expect some solid evidence of the undercharging before paying anything.

pinkshoes

BECARARA said:

My mum bought petrol 8 months ago in a garage where she lives, she goes there twice a month.  Yesterday the cashier told her that 8 months ago he made a mistake and undercharged her and now she has to pay the £26 and was very rude and demanded she pay.  She paid as they que was building and she wanted just to get out of there.  Can they do this 8 months later! Where's the proof they can't just go on a receipt that they have and she doesn't. Surely they need physical evidence how do they know if was her and not a different customer!

If she buys petrol on a regular basis and fills up roughly once every 2 weeks, then the amount she pays will be roughly the same, so she just needs to log onto her bank account and check. Was the amount different 8 months ago? If so, then fair enough, but if not then go back and ask for a refund.

Personally I would not have paid straight away without some sort of evidence of an underpayment. 

Alderbank

There are a lot of strange things about this story.

We all use local garages like this. We fill up, the cashier asks for a sum, we hand that over and leave. Contract proposed and accepted and bargain made. The only circumstance I can think of where we would leave owing £26 is if we fill up then find we have come out without the means to pay or to pay in full. If you are a regular customer like the OP's mum the cashier might say don't worry, fill in this paper slip and pay next time or next week.

Is that what happened?  Did your mum forget all about it?

Sandtree

Alderbank said:

There are a lot of strange things about this story.

We all use local garages like this. We fill up, the cashier asks for a sum, we hand that over and leave. Contract proposed and accepted and bargain made. The only circumstance I can think of where we would leave owing £26 is if we fill up then find we have come out without the means to pay or to pay in full. If you are a regular customer like the OP's mum the cashier might say don't worry, fill in this paper slip and pay next time or next week.

Is that what happened?  Did your mum forget all about it?

Not that odd really... have had a few occasions in various situations where the bill is, for example £100 and thats what they ask for. I say to pay by card, they punch the details in and say to put the card into the chip and pin machine and I see they've accidently punched in £10 rather than £100. If I didnt check then I could easily punch the pin in, pay £10 and when the Approved comes up the person then clear the till as paid. (I did also have one case where £1,000 was accidently put in too rather than £100)

The only oddity is why its taken 8 months to be dealt with but even thats not so odd... could be company financial year end is coming and the owner has raised why they've got some bad debt sitting on the balance sheet and spurred action.

Alderbank

Thanks for sharing your experience and pointing out another way the £26 discrepancy could have arisen, Sandtree. 

Still lots of unanswered questions