Do Petrol Pumps Steal Pennies?
December 10th, 2007 No Comments » | POSTED BY ROB
Blogger Paul Annett ponders on whether petrol stations are involved in some penny pinching by adding a penny onto every transaction, in the hope it goes unnoticed and raises plenty of extra revenue.
It’s a little unlikely, even though the money to be made by doing this on a large scale could be huge. But it’s certainly annoying when youjust slip over your target amount of petrol / diesel (especially as 1p worth gets you pretty much nothing these days).
This also got me thinking about those little trays of change you see by the side of the tills at petrol stations, which you can use, in theory, if you go over the pound mark and don’t have any more cash (e.g., try to fill up with a tenners worth of petrol, you’ve only got a £10 note on you, but you miss and put £10.01 worth of petrol in).
I’m guessing that some kind people leave their change in there for others, but do these odd pennies get abused? I did once see someone using it to help pay for a chocolate bar (not sure whether they bought petrol too), surely this is not the done thing?
Has anyone gone in to a petrol station with no cash at all and counted out the money from one of those trays to pay for something? Anyone work at a petrol station reading this that might know what the “rules” are for these change trays?
Not the most important of personal financial issues, granted, but something to get you thinking on a cold, dark, wintery Monday evening.
