To not transfer money at petrol station

[Phugs]

Yesterday I put fuel in the car and went in to the petrol station to pay. There were a couple of people in front of me in the queue. When I got to the front I said pump 7 please and the cashier informed me that someone had already paid for pump 7.

The man who had paid was just getting back in his car so the cashier gestured for him to come back in from his car and said he had paid for the wrong pump. Immediately he turned aggressive and started shouting at me to pay him the money back by bank transfer.

I refused, I wasn’t going to transfer money to a random person in the petrol station and it immediately felt like a scam.

I requested the cashier just refund the man his money so that I could pay my bill and he refused and started pressuring me to just “pay the man what I owe him”. The customer who had paid my fuel then started calling me a fucking bitch, saying I wasn’t fucking leaving with out paying him his money and he would “do me in” if I tried to leave. He had clearly been drinking, and his friend, who was originally a passenger drove the car away from the petrol station. At this point another customer stepped in and called the police.

The customer then got really aggressive with the man on the phone to the police and started pushing him around, it escalated really quickly and I was asking the cashier again and again to just refund the man his money so that I could pay for my fuel. I asked him to bring a manager out and he said he was manning the station on his own and there was no one else to assist.

Two female police officers arrived and the man was increasingly aggressive with them, calling them both fucking bitches and insulting their appearances. Eventually he was arrested, the cashier then could magically create me another bill and I paid.

When I was leaving the cashier told me I could have avoided the altercation if I’d just paid the man what I owed him and when I’ve tried to lodge a complaint with the petrol station manager, she’s said the same and that it was between me and the other customer to sort out, that the cashier had done nothing wrong by refusing the customer a refund.

Im fairly certain I’m not in the wrong here, would anyone transfer money to a random stranger in a petrol station and walk away without any proof of payment?

I know you’ve said you’ve logged a complaint now but I would strongly encourage you to forward your complaint to the CEO inbox. For something so ridiculous and also dangerous given the way the altercation progressed physically to others trying to help, it should be raised top down.

You won’t get a reply from the CEO themselves but their direct team will handle it and ensure any actions with the store themselves will happen and not just a general sorry but not sorry/brush under the carpet

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You were right not to transfer the money. The staff should have been able to sort it. The other customer was an arse and got was coming to him. Had the man been reasonable and the amounts the same, I might have considered paying for his fuel as I can’t see how this was a scam. I think it was an error which was handled badly by the staff initially.

You have to think out of the box...Its a type of scam where the driver and the cashier are in cahoots with eachother. He pretends to have got petrol, the cashier pretends to call him back - you pay him £30 to make angry man go away and its a win win for the angry man. The cashier may also have been under pressure from God knows who - and wasn't able to 'refund' because he hadn't even paid had he?

The cashier should have refunded him. Expecting you to refund the guy was ridiculous. I don't understand why the cashier didn't ask you to move your car from the pump that was already paid for to let the guy that paid use that pump and then you could have paid for whichever new one that you chose.

Same here!

I would be absolutely fuming! Def escalate to their head office

Nope. Totally nope.

Not the customer's responsibility to deal with shouty scam man.

At best you'll end up down money, at worst you'll get a fist in your face or a knife in your ribs.

Cashier in relative safety refunds and rebills. Coppers called if drama persists. Any other way, madness lies.

Same here. I haven't got a banking app on my 10+ year old phone, and it probably wouldn't work on it anyway, as it's so old.

I generally pay at the pump at for petrol anyway, and I thought most people did. Even our rural petrol stations have that option these days.

To those asking about the amounts, mine was £55, I don’t know how much his was. We didn’t start with a reasonable discussion about a resolution that escalated, he immediately got aggressive as soon as he was told he had paid for the wrong pump, demanding I transfer the money to him which put me straight on guard. Straight away then the only reasonable resolution for me was to pay the cashier and get a receipt as proof of purchase.
The cashier didn’t offer any suggestion to resolve such as paying / refunding the difference, just suggested I bank transfer the money which was a flat out no from me.

Thanks for this! I will be making sure they get a copy of the complaint.

It's always telling how quickly police can turn up to some incidents.

it's almost as if they have a "favoured artist" system ....

Completely unreasonable of the cashier.

I went in to pay for my petrol and was told that it had already been paid - was I sure I was asking for the right pump? Pointed out my car was parked on said pump, cashier called for senior staff member to authorise recharging of pump amount to me. No drama, all swiftly and easily done.

Having said that, the customer who accidentally paid my pump had left by then, so if they’d still been in the shop I don’t know what would have happened.

Wow yanbu at all op, I had this exact scenario happen to me recently at a shell and the cashier refunded the person who paid for the wrong pump then allowed me to pay for it. The whole resolution took less than 10 mins

I never do, either.

I hate filling the car up, so I generally wait till it's in the red and then fill it to the brim, unless I'm going a fair way away.

I LOVE that!
I would say it’s less lowering yourself, and more telling him what he needed to hear.
Honestly, these emotional ‘men’ need to learn to control themselves in public.

At the risk of derailing, this is an advantage to electric cars that I had not previously identified. Impossible to pay for someone else's by mistake/scam even at a public charger.

Money laundering?

Dodgy bloke puts in the minimum amount of petrol in their car. Then pays for your £55 worth of fuel with dirty money. He then gets £55 of clean money from your bank account. Dodgy bloke pays the minimum spend for his fuel.

Put that scenario in your email to the CEO - I guarantee that will get his attention!

Or alternatively the bloke pays for your fuel on a card. Gets refunded by you. Then attempts a charge back on his card.

Or the card he used to pay for your fuel is stolen.

So many alarm bells ringing about what the petrol station / that bloke were up to!

Yes, pisshead man was at best an unpleasant arse, but the cashier's failure to do the obvious thing and process a refund made things worse.

Supposing pisshead man had got physical with the OP? It would have been partly the cashier's fault imo. They had the wherewithal to resolve the situation, the OP didn't.

I thought I was going to get a smack when he called me a fucking bitch

If you were fearful for your safety, it's assault - a criminal charge.

I'd take this to a Consumer Expert/Champion or newspaper because that petrol chain is putting female travellers at risk, both personally and financially. It's an absolutely ludicrous notion that you should pay another customer to balance the garage's books! They should be named, shamed and retrained.

Good on you for standing your ground, and for the other customer for stepping in.As a PP said, easier to pressure the lone woman, as opposed to the leary drunk.

What if your bill is £20 and theirs is £70?

I know what you mean OP, because you want to maintain the moral high ground, but this sort of aggressive, knuckle-dragging oik would have understood what you were saying and it would have really pissed him off - so GOOD FOR YOU! 😂

I assume it’s some sort of scam because what the cashier was asking for doesn’t make sense.
Their bank doesn’t allocate £55 for pump 7, it just records a sum of money. If he had paid OP’s £55 and his fuel was less then the cashier only needed to refund the difference. If his was more then there should have been no question of a refund and he just needed to pay the balance.
There may have needed to be done internal reconciliation on the petrol station accounting system, but nothing to involve OP.

Absolutely bonkers behaviour and you did the right thing. I’m glad you didn’t pay and that someone called the police.

It’s totally down to the person paying to know they are paying for the right amount from the right pump. Just because you are too drunk or angry or a big bloke doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for knowing what you’re paying for.

I went into our local petrol station the other day, filled up, went inside to pay, said pump 10, please. Man at the till said, sorry, there is no pump 10. I said, wait, what? looked out the window to double check where my car was actually parked and the sign said 10. I said, yes, there is, it’s pump 10. Man said, sorry, there isn’t a pump 10. 🤔 I said give me a minute. I walked outside, stood next to my car, looked up at the #10 sign above the pump, confirmed I wasn’t completely mad. Then walked back in and went to the other till, and said pump 10, please, and the lady said, that will be £85.20 when your ready, thank you, and I paid. 🤷🏻‍♀️

TBF if the cashier can't physically refund because they need a manager and one isn't present, refunding can be as obvious as the sky being up, but they still can't do it.
That falls on the company preventing the cashier resolving situations like this effectively, or not always having a manager on site.

I worked somewhere where this was the case and where only managers could issue a refund because floor staff were issuing them when customers demanded and when they weren't due, but we always had a manager on site, the machine requested an access code to issue a refund, no matter how obvious it was that a refund was due, I couldn't physically do it.