Friday, September 14, 2007

Prepay Gas Stations with No Pay at the Pump

I have hated these gas stations for a while and this morning I just had to blog about it. At first I tolerated them because they were generally a couple of cents cheaper than gas stations around them. But after a while that wasn't worth it, but I got suckered in because for the last week or so this one has been ten cents or more cheaper than those around it.

Before I could just go in and leave them my credit card and tell them I was going to fill up and then come back in. That right out of the gate was a bad idea. Leaving your credit card unattended bad idea. I consoled myself into doing it, because people do it all the time in restaurants and after all this is cheap gas we are talking about. This time I tried and the lady that appeared to be the trainer or supervisor told the lady at the counter they can't do that anymore. Then the lady tried to tell me to give her my ID. I actually felt better about that than the credit card, but the other lady said no. She then said leave me your car keys, which felt worse than leaving the credit card, since I have keys to both my vehicles, keys to the house, and a device to open the door at work on that key ring. Nonetheless I left them there.

So that was time consuming and a bad security situation. In addition, I had to wait behind people getting their smokes and lottery tickets, which made the process even slower. And I had to wait in line twice, because I had to come back in to pay and to get my car keys. At ten cents cheaper I know this will probably cost me a buck or two more, but if I am alone I am going to drive on by these little mom and pop stations with no pay at the pump. By the way, pay at the pump has got to be one of the best inventions.

I don't care if I have to drive a little further and pay a little more. I am not doing that again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is a violation of the Visa and Mastercard Terms of Service to require consumers to show ID with credit cards. Merchants who violate these terms of service are subject to fines as well as potential loss of credit card acceptance rights.

Fortunately Mastercard takes complaints for merchants who "require identification" right at their website.
http://www.mastercard.com/us/personal/en/contactus/merchantviolations.html

Perhaps Visa's merchant guidelines for "card present" transactions will help you see how credit card transactions are supposed to be handled:
http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/card_present.html

Note that cards which are "unsigned" or say "see ID" are not to be accepted. When you accept these cards, you risk non payment for the transaction. As a merchant, you are always paid for the transaction as long as you follow the procedures outlined on the Visa site.

The Denver Post recently discussed the "see ID" topic: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_6787955

shannon said...

some gas stations have stopped accepting credit card transactions for gas purchases simply because the cost of processing these payments is costing them a lot of money. they figure that all the customers that usually pay with credit cards will pay with cash instead. unfortunately, i think this assumption is generally wrong and that most customers will just go elsewhere instead.