UK fuel theft

I don't think that is possible here, unless maybe you use a stolen credit card.

Cash buys are pre-paid, and you get what you pay for.

When people steal credit cards, they often use a gas station to test them.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

UK Pay at Pump is smarter than that - you provide a bank card and the system reserves £100. Lets you fill until full or you decide to stop. It then confirms the transaction value and takes the right amount of money.

There are a lot of card only pay at pump dispensers in the UK now, but there has always been a lot of smaller garages (and even some big supermarkets) where at least half the pumps are enabled by someone sat in a kiosk and you pay in there. They want you to go in and buy newspaper, sweets, snacks, lunch etc. Only during Covid was Pay at Pump strongly recommended and entry into the kiosk barred.

Quite often it is only possible to get loyalty points by going to the kiosk as you are not supposed to use your mobile phone on the forecourt.

Too slow - they rely on fast turnround to make a living. The margins on selling fuel are incredibly low (supermarkets use it as a loss leader).

ANPR means that they have the car registration and that coupled with most people being basically honest used to be good enough.

Trump's Middle East war has pushed the price of diesel in particular through the roof and some people are now stealing it instead of paying. Similar problem affects theft of heating oil from domestic tanks too.

He's forcing up the price of fossil fuels to discourage Climate Change. You should thank him.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

That's how most of our pumps operate.

But, you can "set" the station to operate in any of several different modes:

- "trust" (pump is always enabled; pump and then square up with operator)

- prepay to attendant (walk in, announce amount to credit to which pump; receive difference AFTERWARDS, if you overpaid)

- prepay to system (per pump or at a shared "island terminal"; fuel dispensed once credit verified; cashback via attendant inside, if required) You can also set the pump to prevent topping off -- the first time it stops (auto shutoff from back pressure), it is disengaged.

It is possible to set up a station for fully unattended operation (but you wouldn't do so as folks could still engage in unsafe and unsupervised behaviors -- like dispensing into milk cartons, driving off with hose still in tank, etc.)

We designed "fully unattended" mode knowing that the cost of a "warm body" at the pumps solely to sell fuel was an extra overhead that we argued could be eliminated. Having to maintain this extra "retail outlet" is a cost many would not like to bear (needs to be restocked, subject to theft, exposes attendant to crime, etc.)

I don't think it is possible to "steal" fuel, here, as most pumps are automated and either require a credit/debit card to begin the transaction *or* an interaction with the attendant to get them to enable the pump.

Some stations have automatically locking doors so the attendant has to let you in -- AND OUT! I.e., attempts at robbery allow the attendant to isolate himself in a secure portion of the store and YOU in the other part of the store awaiting the arrival of law enforcement.

Police departments have stopped treating these sorts of thefts as "criminal" and now expect the owner/operator to pursue the offender civilly. So, there is incentive to prevent them from happening in the first place.

Heating oil (only used in certain regions of the country) is offered "on credit". But, failure to pay means you won't get another fill-up when you later NEED it (homes without heat get cold really fast in winter).

While I can't attest that there is any coordinated sharing of "bad payer" information among suppliers, most are usually small operators and I wouldn't doubt they share some of that information regardless as to legality (much like consultants know which clients are slow to pay, etc. without any formal "service" informing them of that)

He is forcing up the price of middle eastern oil, but he is also encouraging US oil producers to "drill baby, drill" to exploit the shortage that he has created.

A sophisticate like yourself should aware that this is why he is doing it. Climate change - of which he is just as blissfully ignorant as you are - doesn't come into it.

Do yours now use secure chip&PIN verification or legacy magnetic stripe?

That is still pretty much the default in the UK for about half of all petrol stations. Even the ones with Pay at Pump aisles about half are on trust. And the manual kiosk operator is looking after 6-10 pumps all in constant use most of the time (at least during the day).

Unknown in the UK at least in my experience. Paying for fuel with cash is pretty much gone away (Covid pretty much killed cash transactions).

A few Pay at Pumps will let you set a fixed value of fuel, but will deliver a lesser amount if the tank back pressure shows that it is full.

Auto fill is not permitted in the UK by law. You have to have your hand on the pump trigger for the fuel to flow (for ordinary motorists).

In the UK ASDA have some totally unattended petrol stations slightly remote from the supermarket. No kiosk at all. This is a small one:

Be a miracle if that URL works! Try this one: <https://www.google.com/maps/@54.5718728,-1.2876526,19z>and put the little Google Streetview man on the petrol station. Should be dead centre on the screen. Very minimalist setup...

In the UK the law on buying fuel is complicated. If your payment method fails and you have already put the fuel in then you have some fixed time to settle the debt before *any* action can by taken by the vendor.

It is this loophole that creates the problem for fuel theft. Leaving false contact details makes it a PITA for the garage.

Same in the UK. However the car registration licensing authority will provide vehicle keeper details for the garage.

It is theft of kerosene from domestic tanks that has become a problem in the UK as the cost of the stuff has rocketed up along with diesel.

The stations that I use are all "chipped" -- "tap to pay". But, I have been out of that industry for decades so can't comment on how universal this is.

I see people "using their phones" to pay; unsure if that is NFC or some other technology.

That would be the exception, here.

Most allow for "self service" at the pump or an island terminal (shared among several pumps). Few accept *cash* at the pump or island terminal (you don't want cash to be outside of your immediate control... like smash and grabs for ATMs)

Expecting someone to have a credit card is prohibitive. Many people pay with cash. E.g., grocery stores have bill validators and coin acceptors -- as well as the ability to dispense change.

There are some places that prohibit cash purchases (usually to protect their employees from having cash on hand).

Some require transactions to be "in person" while others will tolerate over the phone (credit card).

Yes. For folks who have prepaid with cash ("Give me $20 on pump 7"), they expect to receive their change from the attendant. To avoid having to make a second trip inside (the first to prepay, the second for your change), you underfill your tank.

Ah! Most folks, here, will set the pump to latch, get back inside the vehicle (!) and expect it to shut off when "full". Then, revisit it to "top it off" when it shuts off. This has some environmental consequences so some pumps will not restart once the backflow is tripped.

Yes, that was what we envisioned when we designed the "unattended" capability. But, there were objections that too many safety issues could arise.

A similarly sized station, here, would have either a *tiny* building in the center (for the pump controllers and an attendant) *or* a small "market" selling convenience items.

Ah. Here, you don't get the fuel until you've paid (or provided a chargeable card that has been verified WILL pay).

The little "markets" represent a different sort of problem as they can be frequented by people who are NOT buying fuel (for convenience items *or* to rob the attendant!) as they don't enforce the same "prepay" mechanism.

You mean, theft from "consumers" (vs. suppliers)?

When we burned heating oil, the tank was usually in the basement with a fill tube (and vent) extending up above ground. Theft would require removing the access cap (easy) and pumping/siphoning the fuel out -- likely in full view of neighbors, etc.

Far more likely to have your vehicle stolen off your property as that's a quick transaction.

So, re: the cited story... what is the remedy for these vendors?

I took a bus early this morning to the city (Leeuwarden) It stops around the corner every 30 minutes or every hour during holidays, accurate to the minute. Did some shopping, bought some clothes and nice food. Then back. Cost me 10 Euros

No car maintenance, no fuelling, no insurance, Met some interesting people also a school trip with many little kids... Almost everybody on the smartphone driving :-) Cars? who needs it? Big things I can get delivered. Else I take the bike.

Don't those pumps have autoretracting filler hoses? I don't think that I've ever pulled up at a pump in the UK where the hose is resting on the drive. I know that the hoses can withstand being driven over, but it still looks odd to me.

Many towns are not laid out, well, for mass transit. In Boston, I could get almost anywhere -- to within a few blocks -- over the entire metro area. Here, the busses are few and far between -- and the city is 227 sq miles (just the city limits, not including the adjoining cities and suburbs)

By contrast, the *city* of Boston is less than 50 sq miles.

A trip to either of the two main oriental markets is at least 25 minutes (at 45MPH seed limit "in town") each way. A *bus* trip is closer to an hour. Same road, same time of day.

Mass transit is something one takes for granted -- until you don't have it!

I usually walk to work. It's about half a mile and 200 vertical feet.

I hadn't noticed that. If you use look at images for other dates they seem to have been properly maintained up until about 2020.

They do retract nominally and they are super long pipes at that so that you can fill a car with the filler cap on the wrong side. ASDA isn't known for its quality of service but they are cheap and 24/7.