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?

So who was going to pay for his petrol then?

it definitely sounds dodgy. Surely there's someone who regulates these franchises?

I find myself wondering how many men this happens to ?

😂 no denying that!

But, in this situation, I dont think its a scam. I think the cashier was working alone without a manager and couldn't process the refund. The manager shouldn't have left the cashier alone which is why the manager backed up the cashier even though it was the wrong thing to do.

How are you able to be so certain? It's absolutely impossible to know anything definitive from the account of only one of the three people involved.

Do you have some kind of special powers? What else can you know for sure without the full facts?

Paying what you owe to the cashier to cover the other person's petrol is one thing. Doing a bank transfer direct to the other person - absolutely not!!!

Once you've complained to the police and to the manager and/or higher up in the organisation you might consider a call to the local newspaper - they would probably be interested in running it as a warning to other motorists.

Actually this is a good point about Shell petrol stations being franchises and not something I'd even considered. I generally buy my petrol at my local Sainsbury's petrol station, although occasionally I use my local Shell garage, but will make a point of avoiding all Shell garages now if that is their modus operandi. They willingly put the Op and another customer at risk of physical harm through their own error, and were not in the least apologetic about it, worse in fact as they tried to put the blame on the Op.

Not exactly good customer service is it "Come to Shell, we will deliberately cause a situation that will ensure you, our customers, are subject to physical violence while we stand back and watch and then we will blame you for our error"

It was the cashier's or the man's mistake. He should have sorted it out by giving a refund.

Not all are franchises and not all have this level of customer service. I would not return to the one that the OP has visited! I’ve heard it happen at esso and Morrisons.

I used to work in a petrol station and this happened more than you'd think. If someone came in to pay and asked for the wrong pump and it was less than they were expecting, they would pay it and leave. Usually, we were able to rectify the situation as we had eyes on who was at what pump, howver sometimes it was so busy that we couldn't do that and these mistakes happened. We couldn't refund customers as we didn't have the ability to do that. Usually the other customer would end up paying what they owed and we took the remainder as a loss.

Blimey that sounds harrowing @Phugs Hope you're OK now. As has been said, it sounds like a scam. The man who paid for pump 7 (your pump) must have known it was the incorrect amount!

I put around £33 in my car last week, and the cashier said £15 please.' I was like 'eh?' I knew it was around £33and I said 'pump 9 yeah?' She said 'oh sorry, I thought you said pump 5! Oh yes, £33.07 please!' So I KNEW that £15 wasn't right. This horrible dickhead knew all right! You definitely do need to put in a complaint for sure!

I totally agree that it's absurd, but I'm not the only person to work under a similar policy even on this thread.
Me thinking it's absurd or the customers that it affected complaining about it, made absolutely no difference to the fact that I didn't have the code that meant I could do a refund, no matter how much it was obvious that's what needed to happen. And if there wasn't a manager on site, well there was no refund full stop. And absolutely nothing I could do about it. No matter how frustrating the situation was for everyone involved.

Absurd and ridiculous policy? Absolutely!
Within the power of the cashier to resolve? No.

I don't drive but have worked retail. They should have refunded the man, re charged him and then charged you for your petrol. You did the right thing.

Are you sure you weren't running some kind of money laundering scam 😂

Apparently there's no way there could be a mundane reason

Omg I forgot about the fact only managers can do refunds. It's such a ridiculous policy if there's no manager on site. I get it needing to be approved but shops should find remote ways to get it approved now surely (been a few years since I was on retail lol!)

Exactly 👍🏼🤣

escalate right to the top of the country. it is not your problem to solve, and the situation sounds scary.

If that's true, that is completely unacceptable to expect customers to sort out a petrol station's employee failures/mistakes amongst themselves.

OP would have been within her rights to leave as her fuel was paid for.
Her asking the customer who accidentally paid for it to be refunded by the station so she could pay it herself, and acquire a receipt from the station, is a perfectly reasonable and expected outcome.

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

You did the right thing. Also, good on you for keeping a clear head in such a situation. I might have felt pressured to transfer the money, but would sure have regretted it later if it had turned out to be a scam.

The attendant was batshit for even suggesting you transfer money to a random stranger. You were absolutely right to demand proof of payment directly from the gas-station.

This is disgraceful. I know you said you have submitted a complaint and I do hope you follow it through. Either it was a scam (or an attempt at least) or if it wasn't, then the cashier needs a good kick up the backside for how they handled this and also their attitude. I don't like seeing people getting into trouble at work but this one clearly needs to be put straight.

Well done OP for how you handled it, and glad that others stepped in to help you too.

I think you handled this very well. I don't have a banking app on my 'phone so the cashier would have to refund the bloke. It was his error saying the wrong pump number.

Shell garages are mainly franchises and many of them are known to run scams. I no longer buy petrol from Shell.

My husband stopped in one late at night, went in to pay for petrol, tapped his phone and it said approved so he turned to leave. The men at the counter then call him back and tell him it hasn't gone through. Husband checks his internet banking and it has. They tell him it is only a pending charge and won't go through, then turn quite aggressive, call him a thief and tell him they'll call the police if he doesn't pay again. So he does.

Then both payments do go through and he had to contact the bank to reclaim one of them. After some research we saw that this is a common scam with Shell.

Wouldn't surprise me if yours was something similar which then went wrong when the police were called!

I used to manage a petrol station and in situations like this we had a couple of things we could do, if yours and the man's petrol was the same price, we would just get you to pay his pump so its all equal and if there was a difference like yours was more, we would refund the difference back to him and then get you to pay his and the difference iyswim. We would never encourage you to make a personal payment to anyone and we would have used the panic buttons when he became aggressive. I hope shell investigate properly and hold the employee and manager accountable.

Can’t believe the cashier said that to you on the way out! People are awful :(

God this is so so so unprofessional of them!!!! I’d be complaining to the head office tbh.